An Invitation - to Wholeness

 
Psalm 101…
...from the book by Nan C. Merrill…
Psalms for Praying:
An Invitation To Wholeness
I sing of loyalty and justice;
to You, O Beloved, I sing.
I give heed to the Way that
leads to peace,
Making a home in our hearts,
You are our loving Companion and Friend.
May I walk with integrity
where’er I go,
May I see you in all creation!
May I be a mirror of your Love
to all that I meet;
May I reflect the freedom of your
Truth, and live
As a beneficial presence in
the world.
Forgive me, O Merciful One, if I turn
from those in need.
Humble me if I become arrogant
and greedy.
Embrace me with your Presence.
I accompany those who love You,
that I may grow in
wisdom;
I enter into the Silence, into the
Eternal Light,
and listen for your gentle Voice.
For, no one who oppresses another,
who keeps company with injustice,
will dwell in the house of Love.
And, no one who prefers darkness
will live in the glory of Light
In the morning I offer myself to You
in prayer,
by night I surrender to You
in trust;
O, that I might walk in the Light
with a grateful heart,
and radiate peace to the world!

A Contemplation on Love - Thomas Merton

The Merton Reflection for the Week of June 25, 2007

"All through the Verba Seniorum [The Sayings of the Desert Fathers] we find a repeated insistence on the primacy of love over everything else in the spiritual life: over knowledge, gnosis, asceticism, contemplation, solitude, prayer. Love in fact is the spiritual life, and without it all the other exercises of the spirit, however lofty, are emptied of content and become mere illusions. The more lofty they are, the more dangerous the illusion.

Love, of course, means something much more then mere sentiment, much more than token favors and perfunctory almsdeeds. Love mean an interior and spiritual identification with one's neighbor, so that she is not regarded as an "object" to "which" one "does good." The fact is that good done to another as an object is of little or no spiritual value. Love takes one's neighbor as one's other self, and loves him with all the immense humility and discretion and reserve and reverence without which no one can presume to enter into the sanctuary of another's subjectivity. From such love all authoritarian brutality, all exploitation, domineering and condescension must necessarily be absent. The saints of the desert were enemies of every subtle or gross expedient by which "the spiritual man" contrives to bully those he thinks inferior to himself, thus gratifying his own ego. They had renounced everything that savored of punishment and revenge, however hidden it might be."

Thomas Merton. The Wisdom of the Desert. New York: New Directions Press, 1960: 17-18.


Thought to Remember

"Love demands a complete inner transformation-for without this we cannot possibly come to identify ourselves with our brother [and sister]. We have to become, in some sense, the person we love."

The Wisdom of the Desert: 18

Today's Piece of Wisdom

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart
and try to love the questions themselves ...
Don't search for the answers,
which could not be given to you now,
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday far in the future,
you will gradually, without even noticing it,
live your way into the answer.

rainer maria rilke

Where Does The Yearning Come From?

And where does the yearning go or what does it give birth to as time passes? Is it like a stream that starts small and insignificant and over time as it runs through our story does it become a majestic wonderful river that carries life and moves us forward, or does it become like a yawing huge cavern that only echoes the questions back to us, unanswered?

On Saturday evening my little community at Linwood House had a get together that turned out to be a delightful surprise engagement party for David and I. There were many words of blessing, encouragement, love and delight spoken to both of us. One proposed a toast and spoke of the delight they feel at this wonderful blessing for us and how they have watched the changes in the time they have known me. Woven into this blessing he spoke of the "yearning for man" I had held in my heart. While I heard his love and delight, I also felt a momentary sense of shame that this yearning had been seen almost as a desperateness. Momentary as it was, it has turned my heart to consider what the "yearning" we hold within really speaks of, what it gives voice to, and what we do with that.

Since I was a little girl I wanted to get married and have children - that was what girls in my community did. There were not other options - only to be a "spinster" or to be married and raise children. Therefore a woman's identity was found in this role of wife and mother. In retrospect much of my "yearning" was for identity - to be defined and recognized for who that person was. Patriarchal circles define us by our roles instead of letting our eyes see who that individual is and being part of the circle that sets them free to explore, discover and live out that identity.

My heart wanted to be seen as a woman yet my circle saw women only as wives and mothers. My heart wanted to be heard, my voice recognized as one that had something to say, yet my circle saw women as beautiful if they were silent and dutiful. My very being longed to express all that was within yet my circle wanted to silence the sensuality of women, their ability to feel and create and let the artist within be gloriously expressive. I don't speak of this now with bitterness - only with eyes that see that the yearning comes from a soul that seeks to let the small inner stream blend with the glorious rivers that lead to the ocean of mystery that life holds. What some may have seen as a "yearning" for a man in my life, I now see as a soul that was desperate for individual identity but only understood that identity came as a wife or mother (a role in others lives). If only someone could see the woman within, or hear the woman within. Does it take a man do to that to make one a woman? No - the one who has to see the woman within is myself, to acknowledge and accept her, to listen to her voice and believe she can live vibrantly and wholely in her own right.

Is it not when we follow Jesus instructions to love ourselves that the identity begins to take shape? Is this not where the yearning really is leading us - to the place of loving the artistry that is "me"? Hearing that inner voice of love then becomes the teacher, the Spirit within to reveal the feminine image of God (speaking from my point of view). Yearning then becomes the voice leading to Holy Presence, sacred spaces, and community. Believing we each are carriers of life can only come when we begin to acknowledge, embrace and celebrate the life placed within us - the voice of the Almighty whose whisper began the yearning in the beginning. Is it the soul that seeks significance and mystery and this leads us to yearn for what we cannot define but only what has perhaps been defined by others for us? Yet Truth that sits deep within each soul will not give up drawing us to acknowledge and embrace the questions.

Seeking the mystery of life will always be a "yearning" within, but the contentment of embracing the "becoming" is also a place of delightful discovery. Learning to partner with my beloved becomes a new dimension in the mystery of life and of love, that I bring my whole self and true identity into, as does he.

Yearning is misunderstood it seems, or misheard - how can I hear this voice of others souls as I walk through life? I want to listen more closely to hear where it is coming from, or walk alongside another as they labour in the birthing of their true unique identity.

Keeping the Mystery

 
In the excitement of new and wonderful love, in the anticipation of our wedding, the change in what hours I will work and what that looks like, planning, waiting and wonder, one has stepped onto a busy road unaware that the pace has changed to one of hurry/haste and anxiousness. It has become a excessive speed internally.

So in the last few days I have had to return to what I so passionately speak of at the Sensual Table – engaging the senses in the ordinary to enjoy the mystery of being present. It brings me to the question of how the senses draw us into the mystery, which entwines with being present and what the third cord is in the “three strand cord” of life.

This place of nurture to my own heart and soul is essential to living out “loving yourself as well as you love your neighbour”. Loving deeply, loving well, and anticipating life as it moves into this amazing gift of partnering with the one who my heart has expanded to embrace can only come with authenticity as my contemplative soul is fed with quiet and solitude. It calls for intentionally holding my heart open to the Divine Mystery.

I am grateful for the following pieces I have been meditating on:

Often my life is like a spinning top
Hurtling through the days,
Spinning,
Spinning,
Spinning,
Savouring nothing,
Threshing air and noise.
Then, suddenly, unbalanced, thrown, my ground is gone
My dance is done,
Slowly unwinding
I fall,
Stunned,
Stilled,
Into the steady arms
Of God.
Pg 28 A Mystical Heart – Edwina Gateley

Ecclesiasticus 51, 12-15
I will thank you and praise you,
And bless the name of the Lord.
When I was still a youth, before I went travelling,
In my prayers I asked outright for wisdom.
Outside the sanctuary I will pray for her,
And to the last I will continue to seek her.
From her blossoming to the ripening of her grape,
My heart has taken its delight in her.
Sacred Space

Thank you Almighty for those who pen their thoughts so I may read them, digest them, wait in Holy Presence, be present with You, and find Wisdom, find Sophia, that invites me to simply be in the mystery of love, the mystery of life with my senses alive and engaged.