SEASONS OF THE SOUL:THE GREAT UNRAVELING TOWARD LOVE

This particular blog so resonated with me, at this time in my life, in all our lives, in the life of our planet, I had to post here:

Many of us live in fear of the cultural breakdown happening right before our eyes, and yet in some ways, what we most need is a breaking apart before a coming together can happen.

It has been a summer of unraveling: wars in Gaza, Iraq, Syria, the Ukraine; the shooting of an unarmed young black man in the United States; the suicide of beloved actor Robin Williams, which in some ways gave us a way to explore our own inner despair and how close we often feel to the edge of things. Even as I write this litany, I am sure I have forgotten others, and certainly there are the smaller issues of daily life wherever we live—the uncertainties of money, health, and love; trust broken; decisions based on the bottom line rather than human dignity.

If your spirits haven't been challenged, undone, or unraveled, then you are not paying attention.

Sometimes I click on my Facebook news feed, and there, sitting mockingly among the YouTube videos and the advertisements, are images of children torn to pieces and I just sob. I am mocked by the dissonance, the absurdity, and my own sense of helplessness. How do I go to the farmer's market each Saturday and roast my free-range chicken with organic broccoli? How do I lie down in my comfortable bed at night in my home free from violence and the ravages of war?

We do what people who search and seek have been doing for thousands of years: we find new ways to live. We awaken from the numbness; we challenge the status quo. We do it right in our little corners of the world.

It is not even a question of awareness, of posting one more insightful commentary, of sharing one more petition. These things are, of course, good and necessary, but they are never enough.

The heart wants action, to be embodied in daily small kindnesses.

There is an ancient wisdom story from the desert fathers: "Do not feed the heart what does not nourish the heart." We need to stop feeding the consumer machine, which tells us our worth by the newest gadget we have purchased, only to throw the last one in an ever-growing landfill. We need to stop perpetuating the cycles of violence by denouncing war but still letting our minds offer relentless judgments about the people we encounter every day.

We go off to our metaphorical deserts and wildernesses to really reevaluate our priorities.

The heart sees how it is all connected.

We nourish ourselves by finding others who also want to live on the wild edges of the empire—the dominant consciousness—and imagine something different together. This tribe includes kindred souls, maybe even just one or two, along with our spiritual ancestors, the desert mothers and fathers, the mystics and monks who said there is a better way.

We need to feed the heart with silence.

I was so struck, and a bit overwhelmed, by the multitude of responses to Robin Williams' suicide. Everyone seemed to have something to say; everyone was posting more and more words to fill the great mystery of what had happened.

We don't come to understand the great suffering of the world by thinking our way through it. Discussion is good, and conversations and reflection are worthy. And yet, what nourishes the heart most are the moments of radical humility when we step beyond words and into the space between. We listen. We tend. We wait.

The heart endures.

Amma Theodora, one of the desert mothers, shares this story: 

Let us strive to enter by the narrow gate. Just as the trees, if they have not stood before the winter's storms cannot bear fruit, so it is with us; this present age is a storm and it is only through many trials and temptations that we can obtain an inheritance in the kingdom of heaven.

Near Tucson in the southwest U.S., there is a biosphere built twenty years ago and filled with trees and plants, but because it is sealed from the outside atmosphere, it is sheltered entirely from wind. These trees have grown weak and spindly. The winds create strength through resistance and help to spread the seeds. Endurance is staying put in the face of great struggle, it is the wind strengthening our foundation. Endurance means we have looked at suffering in the eye and not run away.

The heart is nourished through tears.

Staying with the suffering of the world inevitably leads to grief. We need to rage together, lament the terrible losses of lives and dignity, of our own sense of security. Rather than numb ourselves or busy ourselves against the onslaught of despair, tears are the path toward softening. Tears remind us of our vulnerability, they call us to yield our desire to control things and be with what is.

Many of us live in fear of the cultural breakdown happening right before our eyes, and yet in some ways, what we most need is a breaking apart before a coming together can happen.

The heart is nourished by love.

In that place of lament, of unraveling and undoing, our hearts can become more tender and vulnerable, more open and spacious. We can choose to respond out of cynicism and harden ourselves toward love and affection or we can choose otherwise.

Years ago at a workshop led by Northwest American storyteller and mythologist Michael Meade he said something that has stayed with me and rises up in times like these. "We must continue to work for love, act with love, even in the face of all other evidence." We can never know whether our efforts make any difference, and yet we must act as if, to continue to make the choice out of love each time, to let cynicism shrivel, even as the world continues to crumble all around us.

The heart inspires the imagination.

In this darkness of moments, we might remember that this is also the place to dare the unimaginable. When everything else seems lost or hopeless, why not risk it all for love? Why not cast off our grasp of what we think will bring security, and embrace the thing that makes us tremble?

It can be hard to remember that there is goodness in the world, that love is the foundational impulse. But together, we must let ourselves unravel, feel the breaking down of everything, stay present, lament, and then imagine. We must act as if, gathered in our little tribes of kindness, showing love to our corner of the world. We must become outposts of generosity.

Let the heart be nourished first and see what happens.


By Christine Valters Paintner, August 26, 2014                          

         Christine Valters Paintner, Ph.D., is a Benedictine Oblate and the online Abbess of Abbey of the Arts, a virtual monastery without walls offering online classes in contemplative practice and creative expression and pilgrimages to Ireland, Germany, and Austria. She is the author of eight books on monasticism and creativity including The Artist's Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom (Ave Maria Press) and her forthcoming book The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Inner Journey (Spring 2015, Ave Maria Press). Christine lives as a monk in the world in Galway, Ireland with her husband of twenty years.

  

LITTLE THINGS AND THE QUALITY OF A HAZELNUT

It has been so HECTIC the past few days, that I have been unable first to explain  about the acorn. Hectic it will remain for awhile, anyway. From what I hear, things are busy all the way around.

I've been mulling this thing about a "symbolic signature" for awhile now. A dear friend of mine puts a bee on her needle-art, and so  I want to put a little something on the work of my hands, whether a craft or a writing. And I like that a symbol takes away from my name--- and focuses on what the thing is--- especially if it might have indeed been inspired by God, even in a small way and with small skills.

That said----

This morning, briefly, while having coffee, on the Catholic TV station, there was a brief program on Saint Julian of Norwich. And the thing that happened to her, regarding a hazelnut, is so similar to what happened to me, with the acorn..... I'm just going to "Copy & Paste" ...

JULIAN OF NORWICH (1342-1416)

The Vision of a Little Thing the Quality of a Hazelnut

When she was 30 years old, Julian contracted a grave illness and came so near death they gave her last rites. At the end of her illness, she had several visions, or showings, that she understood to have come from God. She spent the next 20 years reflecting on these visions and writing down what she had learned from them. Perhaps, the most famous of those showings is this one:

    "And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, 'What may this be?' And it was answered generally thus, 'It is all that is made.' I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. 

    And so have all things their beginning by the love of God.
In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it. But what is this to me? Truly, the Creator, the Keeper, the Lover. For until I am substantially “oned” to him, I may never have full rest nor true bliss. That is to say, until I be so fastened to him that there is nothing that is made between my God and me.

    This little thing which is created seemed to me as if it could have fallen into nothing because of its littleness. We need to have knowledge of this, so that we may delight in despising as nothing everything created, so as to love and have uncreated God. For this is the reason why our hearts and souls are not in perfect ease, because here we seek rest in this thing which is so little, in which there is no rest, and we do not know our God who is almighty, all wise and all good, for he is true rest. 

    God wishes to be known, and it pleases him that we should rest in him; for everything which is beneath him is not sufficient for us. And this is the reason why no soul is at rest until it has despised as nothing all things which are created. When it by its will has become nothing for love, to have him who is everything, then is it able to receive spiritual rest."     (1st Revelation)

Seeing the fragile thing in the palm of her hand, Julian wondered, “I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing.”

Julian had reason to wonder if the world she knew might fall into nothing. As a child she lived through the Black Death, the plague that decimated Europe from 1348 - 1351. Nearly half of the city of Norwich died in a three-year span! The resulting social and economic disruption are hard to fathom.

The plague returned, though less virulently, fifteen years later. Some have speculated that she might have been married and lost her husband and children in this later plague.

Julian lived during the seemingly endless 'One Hundred Years War' between England and France. In 1381, there was a major Peasants' Revolt resulting from years of injustice and unfair taxes.

The church was also in considerable disarray. In the year 1378, the Roman Catholic Church split in what came to be known as the Great Schism. For the next 68 years there were two popes (and for a short time, three!) claiming authority over the Catholic Church. This was bewildering and disillusioning to pious Christians.

And, as noted above, Julian had herself nearly died from serious illness.

Much of this sounds very contemporary. The world we know often seems chaotic, confusing, and tenuous with similar troubles. We, too, have reason to wonder if the world we know might fall into nothing.

And, often enough, our own lives seem so tenuous they might dissolve into nothing. It might be serious illness. It might be job or economic problems. It might be family or relationship difficulties. It might be doubts about faith or uncertainty about love or our competency or our worthiness. It might be specific or it might be a vague unease. Whatever the cause – fear, anxiety, uncertainty – life can seem quite uncertain and our hold on it unsure. Our hold on God can seem tenuous and unsure. Our hold on ourselves can seem tenuous and uncertain.

In spite of her own suffering, and for all that the world around her seemed in disarray, Julian's writings, while distinctly not Pollyannish, are full of joy and hope in the light of God's love demonstrated in Jesus Christ. She found her ease, not in grasping and clinging to the ephemeral littleness of created reality, but in uniting herself to the abiding love and joy of the uncreated God. I have found in her an invaluable, inspiring, and edifying witness to the Good News.

This is from a blog called "INTO THE EXPECTATION" by Matt Gunter, an Episcopal priest, serving in Chicago, having grown up in Indiana.

Whence the title... INTO THE EXPECTATION"?

Justin Martyr, the 2nd century theologian, wrote this in his defense of the Christian Church:

We who ourselves used to have pleasure in impure things now cling to chastity alone. We who dabbled in arts of magic now consecrate ourselves to the good and unbegotten God. We who formerly treasured money and possessions more than anything else now hand everything over to the treasury for all, and share it with everyone who needs. We who formerly cheated and murdered one another and did not even share our home with those who were different or from a different tribe, because of their customs, now, after Christ's appearance, live together and share the same table. Now we pray for our enemies and try to win who hate us unjustly so that they too may live in accordance with Christ's wonderful teachings, that they too might enter into the expectation.

Personally, I like the whole passage and its vision of the Church. But, I am particularly fond of the expression of Christian faith and hope as "entering into the expectation". Thus, in 1 Peter 3:15, Christians are encouraged to "always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the expectation that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence." One way or another, that is what I want to do.

ENTER INTO THE EXPECTATION.

Anyway, tis good stuff.