-------
Image credit: Early Autumn (detail), Qian Xuan (1235-1305), 13th century, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan, USA."Union"
"One God, One Love"
Tuesday, December 13, 2016Lady Julian of Norwich (c. 1342-c.1416) is one of my favorite mystics. Julian experienced her showings, as she called them, all on one night, probably May 8, 1373. It was such a profound experience that she asked the bishop to enclose her in a small anchor-hold built onto St. Julian’s Church in Norwich, England. (We don’t know Julian’s real name; we call her by the name of this church.) From a window that looked into the sanctuary she would attend mass; from another window she would counsel people who came to visit her. Julian lived in the anchor-hold for perhaps twenty years and spent this time trying to communicate what she experienced in one night.
For me, Chapter 54 of Julian’s Showings is the best description I have read of the union of the soul within the Trinity. The mystics always go to the Trinitarian level because here God is a verb more than a noun, God is a flow more than a substance, God is an experience more than an old man sitting on a throne. And we are inside that flow of love. Julian writes:
Greatly ought we to rejoice that God dwells in our soul; and more greatly ought we to rejoice that our soul dwells in God. Our soul is created to be God’s dwelling place, and the dwelling of our soul is God. . . . [This is what some call inter-being.] It is a great understanding to see and know inwardly that God, who is our creator, dwells in our soul, and it is a far greater understanding to see and know inwardly that our soul, which is created, dwells in God in substance, of which substance, through God, we are what we are. [We share in the same substantial, ontological, and metaphysical unity.] And I saw no difference between God and our substance, but, as it were, all God; and still my understanding accepted that our substance is in God. [1]
Intimacy implies twoness, but twoness overcome and enjoyed. Julian preserves differentiation, the dance of partners. She is not a pantheist; she is not saying everything is God. She is saying everything is in God and God is in everything— which is panentheism. Mirabai Starr gives a fresh translation of Julian’s words:
The all-powerful truth of the Trinity is the Father, who created us and keeps us within him. The deep wisdom of the Trinity is our Mother, in whom we all are enfolded. The exalted goodness of the Trinity is our beloved Lord: we are held in him and he is held in us. We are enclosed in the Father, we are enclosed in the Son, and we are enclosed in the Holy Spirit. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are enclosed in us. All Power. All Goodness. All Wisdom. One God. One Love. [2]
Gateway to Silence: We are already in union with God.References:
[1] Julian of Norwich, “The Fifty-Fourth Chapter,” Showings, trans. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (Paulist Press: 1978), 285.
[2] Julian of Norwich, The Showings of Julian of Norwich, trans. Mirabai Starr (Hampton Roads: 2013), 149-150.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Intimacy: The Divine Ambush, CD, MP3 download (CAC: 2013), disc 7.
-------
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation "Unitive Seeing" Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Monday, 12 December 2016 The small self is always objectively in union with God, it just does not know it.
-------
"Union"
"Unitive Seeing"
Monday, December 12, 2016
(Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe)It comes down to this: When we see things in a unitive way, in conscious union with the eyes of God, what we see is qualitatively different. Our seeing is no longer self-referential but expansive. This changes our entire frame and perspective. Unitive consciousness is what the true contemplative is seeking, and thus seeing, day after day.
I want to say very clearly that “foundational holiness” or ontological union with God is our first nature and is enjoyed by people who are psychologically or intellectually immature. In fact, God has always—and only—been in union with an obviously imperfect humanity. That is the essential character of divine mercy. Salvation is always pure and total gift from God. Living and thinking autonomously, separately, or cut off from the Vine (John 15:1-5) or Source is what Paul means by being foolish and unspiritual (1 Corinthians 1:20-2:16). Living in union is what I like to call “knowing by participation.” Spiritual things can only be known from the inside, never as an object outside ourselves, or we utterly distort the perception. We must know subject to subject (I-Thou), not subject to object (I-it).
Separateness and objectification is unfortunately the chosen stance of the small self. From this place we have a hard time thinking paradoxically or living in unity. Instead, we more readily take one side or the other in order to feel secure. The ego frames everything in a binary, dualistic way: for me or against me, totally right or totally wrong. That is the best the small egotistical self can do, but it is not anywhere close to adequate for God’s purposes. It might be an early level of dualistic comparison or intelligence, but it is never wisdom or spiritual intelligence, which is invariably nondual.
The small self is always objectively in union with God, it just does not know it, enjoy it, or draw upon it. “Is it not written in your own law, ‘You are gods’?” (John 10:34). Don’t accuse me of heresy; Jesus apparently quoted his own Scriptures in this regard (Psalm 82:6)! But for most of us, this objective divine image has not yet become the subjective and personal likeness, to use the two helpful Genesis metaphors (1:26). Our goal is to illustrate both the image and the likeness of God. The image is given to all; the likeness must be personally surrendered to, allowed, and practiced. This is the core of Christian faith.
Mystics like Francis and Clare lived from a place of conscious, chosen, and loving union with God. Such union was realized by surrendering to it, not by achieving it. Surrender to Another, participation with Another, and divine union are finally the same thing. Once we have achieved this union, we look out at reality from a much fuller Reality that now has eyes larger than our own.This is precisely what it means to “live in Christ” (en Christo), to pray “through Christ our Lord, Amen.” Note the important preposition here: we do not pray to Christ; we pray through Christ! Most Christians have not clarified this for themselves because they do not know that they are the Body of Christ. This change of consciousness is monumental in its implication.
This utterly transformed sense of self, living in objective union with God, no longer needs to live in shame or denial of its weakness, but rejoices because it does not need to pretend that it is any more than it actually is—which it now realizes is more than it ever hoped for! “When I am weak, I am strong,” Paul says (2 Corinthians 12:10). The loss of our small self, which initially feels like weakness and losing, becomes strength and winning. This is the great paradox enjoyed by every true believer.
Gateway to Silence: We are already in union with God.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of St. Francis of Assisi(Franciscan Media: 2014), 62, 69-71.
-------
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation "Already in Union" Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Sunday, 11 December 2016 We are already in union with God!-------
"Union"
"Already in Union"
Sunday, December 11, 2016For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.[Romans 8:38-39] [1]
We are already in union with God! There is an absolute, eternal union between God and the soul of everything. At the deepest level, you and I are “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3) and “the whole creation . . . is being brought into the same glorious freedom as the children of God” (Romans 8:21). The problem is that Western religion has not taught us this. Our ego over-emphasizes our individuality and separateness from God and others, and, as I said a few weeks ago, we limited God’s redemption to the human species—and not very many individuals within that species!
Daily contemplative prayer helps you rediscover your inherent union and learn how to abide in Presence, trusting that you are already good and safe in God. You don’t have to worry about your little private, separate, insecure self. I am one with you and you are one with your neighbor and you are one with God. That’s the Gospel! That’s the whole point of communion or Eucharist; we partake of the bread and the wine until it convinces us that we are in communion. It seems easier for God to convince bread and wine of its identity than to convince us.
You’re not here to save your soul. That’s already been done once and for all—in Christ, through Christ, with Christ, and as Christ (see Ephesians 1:3-14). By God’s love, mercy, and grace, we are already the Body of Christ: the one universal body that has existed since the beginning of time. You and I are here for just a few decades, dancing on the stage of life, perhaps taking our autonomous self far too seriously. That little and clearly imperfect self just cannot believe it could be a child of God. I hope the Gospel frees you to live inside of a life that is larger than you and cannot be taken from you. It is the very life of God which cannot be destroyed.
As Thomas Merton wrote in his journal, “We are already one. But we imagine we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we already are.” [2]
Gateway to Silence: We are already in union with God.
References:
[1] Romans 8:38-39, New American Standard Bible.
[2] Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (New York: New Directions, 1973), 308. Emphasis mine.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “There Is Only One Suffering; There Is Only One Happiness,” homily, September 13, 2015, https://cac.org/there-is-only-one-sufferingonly-one-happiness/; and
Emotional Sobriety: Rewiring Our Programs for “Happiness,” (CAC: 2011), CD, DVD, MP3 download.
-------
Christian Nonduality—Seriously?
a live webcast with Cynthia Bourgeault
Thursday, January 5, 2017
4:30-6:00 p.m. U.S. Mountain Standard Time
Join Cynthia Bourgeault for a conversation on her new book, The Heart of Centering Prayer: Nondual Christianity in Theory and Practice.
In this talk, Cynthia will share how leading research on the neuroscience of meditation sheds new light on how Centering Prayer can pattern nondual, heart-centered awareness.
Watch the live webcast or view the replay, available online through February 5, 2017. To allow as many people as possible to participate, registration is on a “pay what you can” basis.
Register for as little as $1 at cac.org.
-------
Center for Action and Contemplation
1823 Five Points Road South West (physical)
PO Box 12464 (mailing)
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87195, United States
-------
1823 Five Points Road South West (physical)
PO Box 12464 (mailing)
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87195, United States
-------
No comments:
Post a Comment