“We all have the innate capacity to manifest God because we already are that image by virtue of being created.” (Thomas Keating)
So, what gives rise to the mistaken belief that we are ever separate from Grace?
The below image is my rendering of a famous 12th-century icon, by Andrei Rublev, based on Genesis 18 and titled, Hospitality of Abraham; The biblical story where three strangers are welcomed into the abode of Abraham and Sarah.
I’ve titled it “Never Alone.” It expresses conviction and consent of God’s Presence and Action in my life, a Holy Presence which never abandons nor exiles. It suggests a relationship and a safe meeting place for communion and refuge from the worst of this world.
See the eucharistic chalice at its lower center. When I was a child, I would imagine when receiving communion during mass; the host would float down over my speckled soul; Wrap it and return it to full white divinity.
Today I hold a broader experience, imagination, and practice of prayer, Church, and our eucharistic sacrifice. I include lived experience and imagination as necessary for a deeper understanding of faith’s mysteries. For words can only point.
It is through the practice of Contemplative/Centering Prayer that I am reminded my thoughts are not God’s thoughts.
Contemplative prayer is silence, the “symbol of the world to come” or “silent love.” In this silence, unbearable to the “outer” man, the Father speaks to us his incarnate Word, who suffered, died, and rose; In this silence, the Spirit of adoption enables us to share in the prayer of Jesus. “…like entering into the Eucharistic liturgy.” (CCC2711, 2717)
When I recognize that I am ” a little more than nothing,” but much, much more than my thoughts, my feelings, my body, my spirit, or their summation, I begin to know myself deeply and this “silent love,” within my soul.
And not me just alone, but as my spiritual sister (Cynthia) in the forest calls the below image, “the great cloud of witnesses;”
A Communion of Saints
In being open, vulnerable, and heartfelt in the sharing of both light and shadow, we enter a deep intimacy, …as a communion of holy persons.
This agape, …our communion of souls is the very best of meeting places. And for me, the incarnate and deepest meaning of Church, “on earth as it is in heaven.”
Until we enter full consummation with “thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven,” our outer man and outer world will bear its suffering and death. It is a lonely place, but through our call and participation as a People of God in the Work of God (Opus Dei), we live a deep eucharistic (sacrificial) liturgy (CCC 957,1069).
First, then, a lesson of silence (CCC 533).
I’ve long thought of silence as the absence of sound. Such as words spoken and unspoken dependent on whether there were intended as a weapon or healing balm. Like anyone else, I’ve experienced both. Last year a friend pointed me to a thought from Robert Sardello’s book, Silence, The Mystery of Wholeness, that takes me deeper.
“We have a strong tendency to imagine Silence as the absence of sound. This imagination deprives Silence of being anything in itself and makes it emptiness, a void in what should be the norm.
But Silence was here before anything else, and it envelops everything else. It is the most primary phenomenon of existence, both palpably something and seemingly nothing. Silence is prior to sound, not the cessation of sound. It is already present. If we drop into quietness for just a moment, we feel the presence of Silence as an invitation.”
Just to think, eternity did not begin when I was conceived and it will not end when I die. That I know.
We come from Holy Silence then conceived into creation. At our bodily death, we return to Holy Silence.
In this worldly in-between period of life, we pass through a whole lot of “doing and distraction.” Yet regardless of circumstance we remain invited to consciously participate in God’s divine life and love (Holy Silence).
To enter this Holy Silence, consider the term “Sacrament of Surrender,” which Kathleen Dowling Singh describes in her book, Unbinding, The Grace Beyond Self. Our letting go of the idols we’ve grasped for happiness may bring grief but our passage through will bring us to new life.
Through aging, and the unbinding from self-referencing thought, I am being awakened to a deeper space and caring of soul. It is no longer just openness and honesty, but rather:
Heartfelt Openness, and Honesty
ps. Feel free to comment, God Bless
