The wilderness constantly reminds me that wholeness is not about perfection… I have been astonished to see how nature uses devastation to stimulate new growth, slowly but persistently healing her own wounds. Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness - mine, yours, ours - need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life.Devastation as a seedbed for new life? It does seem to be so. If it is so, though, then it makes everything different from the way we thought it was. Perhaps if we read the Sermon on the Mount, and the Good Shepherd passage from John 10, in that light, they may just begin to make sense for us...
Sunday, July 20, 2008
More from the wilderness...
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3 comments:
This makes me think of the end chapters in Gerald May's "The Awakened Heart," which I am currently re-reading.
"Nothing happens apart from God's presence. And when the situation calls for it, the person's responses may then be seen for what they are: willing to sacrifice life itself in the cause of love." (208-209)
"To seek to imitate this interior experience, then, is to nurture the true meaning of incarnation; whether or not the presence of God is experienced, nothing, nothing need happen apart from God. Or to put it more positively, everything, everything can happen within the consciousness of God's presence." (210)
For me, the wilderness theme ties in very closely to some of your other posts, Mike, on brokenness and the Eucharist. I think of what Fr. Thomas Keating always says, about the fact that with the practice of contemplative prayer the false self is being destroyed layer by layer, and how this generally makes the person feel like things are getting much worse instead of better for a time. Then with the continued practice of contemplative prayer, the healing begins; the devastation of the false self leaves the seedbed of the true self to flourish...through the grace of contemplative prayer and the grace of the sacraments, especially Reconcilation and Holy Eucharist.
Oh, this is wisdom indeed, from both of you...
Gabrielle, the bit about feeling worse rather than better is such a liberation - it is so, but to have someone point it out is such a lifting of the heart! The devastated seedbed - it really is a true image of the life of prayer...
Isn't it extraordinary how this all ties in? You were right to see the connection with Eucharist, Gabrielle, I'm sure, and your passages from Gerald May, Jan, nail it - nothing, even (especially) the sacrifice of love itself, happens apart from the presence and the grace of God.
"What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?" (Romans 8.31-32)
Thank you, both of you!
Mike
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