Ch. 10 The Eternal (continued)
The Eternal Question of Humanity
Whom are we in relationship to God? Should we be self-fulfilling or self-denying? Active or passive? Passionate or dispassionate? Involved or detached from life? Willful or receptive? Being or doing? How do we best relate to God and live out God's love? This little light of mine, should I let it shine?
To Be or Not To Be
“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” (St. Catherine of Siena) or “Few souls understand what God would accomplish in them if they were to abandon themselves unreservedly to Him and if they were to allow His grace to mold them accordingly.” (St. Ignatius of Loyola) Should we express our own will as an aspect of God's will or should we empty ourselves of own will in order to become entirely receptive to God's will? My first thought is “Why would God have created the whole motley crew of us if we were all to end up exactly the same devoid of our unique self-expression?” Then I remember my childhood mantra of “What would God want me to do?” and wonder if that practice was a form of self-emptying and, if so, how much that impacted my spiritual development. Then again, I remember last year picking up Thomas à Kempis' The Imitation of Christ which I had carried with me in my early to mid teens and finding some of the contents to be shockingly self-flagellating. I don't think God want us to deny ourselves. I think God wants us to be our better selves, our truer selves, to use the scalpel of love to chisel away our petty distractions exposing the love, goodness, and fairness found when we are most deeply ourselves. “Embark on the journey of love./ It takes you from yourself to Yourself.” (Rumi, Cut It Short)
If we are charged with being our better selves, how do we know when we have become or are acting from our better selves? A loving and open quality of being is a good sign; being angry and defensive is not. Perhaps even easier than evaluating our own is-ness, we can check [that which we perceive to be] external reality. Matter matters though matter is not all that matters. Matter is the resistance which gives meaning to our thoughts and potentialities. We must dialogue with matter to give rise to our actions and actualities. It's not all just in our heads or will or perceptions. Our better selves can be seen in the impact we have on the world around us. Are we facilitating the movement of love in the world? Are we intentionally living out God's love or are we frittering and wasting our hours in an off-hand way? Is our life filled with love or anger or fetters? “By knowing God,/ one is released/ from all fetters.” (The Upanishads) To be or not to be? Let us be unique agents of our good and fair God of love.
To Live In God & To Live Out God
So, this little light of mine (and ours), we will let it shine God's love by removing the fetters to expose the loving quality of being deep inside us that connects with God and seeks to express God's love in the world. To live in God is to be open to the numinous and to be present to the full glory of life: “With passion pray./ With passion make love./ With passion eat and drink and dance and play./ Why look like a dead fish/ in this ocean of God?” (Rumi, With Passion) To live in God may involve a practice of prayer, devotion, contemplation, mediation, mysticism, or sacramental awareness. To live in God is to be immersed in God's love and to love God intentionally, through the barren times, through the challenges, through the dark nights, through the fields of stone, until we once again experience in our time God's eternal loving embrace. To live out God is to participate in actively sharing God's love with the world. It is not enough to experience mystical moments of merged consciousness. These moments fill us with love that must be shared to be actualized. We are the dialogue between God and the world that makes God's love concrete. Being + Doing = Becoming. First, we elevate our quality of being through living in relationship with God, then we act on God's love among the people and creation in our midst, and in so doing we create God's Kingdom of love.
