FOLLOWING THE MYSTICS

If you keep listening to the love, if you keep receiving the love, trusting the love ¢â‚¬”even with all your limitations, with all your unworthiness, with all your limited intellect or whatever you feel holds you back ¢â‚¬”you start to experience within yourself a sense of possibility. Whatever life is inviting you into, you have this sense that it is okay and, even better, and that you can do it! That is the joy of the saints. Now you don ¢â‚¬â„¢t have to do it by the world ¢â‚¬â„¢s criteria of success or performance. As Mother Teresa loved to say,  ¢â‚¬Å“The only real success is faithfulness. ¢â‚¬  To be faithful to this inner love is in itself the greatest success. It is of itself the major possibility. No outer successes are necessary to be happy.

This is what makes the mystics sort of dangerous. It ¢â‚¬â„¢s not just possibility they experience ¢â‚¬”but permission. It ¢â‚¬â„¢s permission to color outside the lines. It ¢â‚¬â„¢s permission to be who you really are. It ¢â‚¬â„¢s not just gay people who have to come out of their closets. We ¢â‚¬â„¢re all in our closets. They ¢â‚¬â„¢ve just given us a good metaphor for what we all have to do. We ¢â‚¬â„¢re all afraid to come out of our various closets. It ¢â‚¬â„¢s not the need to be outrageous or rebellious. It ¢â‚¬â„¢s so much better than that. It is permission to be the “image and likeness of God” that you already are. We each are unlike any other image or likeness. God is saying to each of us,  ¢â‚¬Å“All I want is for you to return to the Sender who you really are! ¢â‚¬  Ironically, it takes most of our life to find it and to accept it.

Adapted from Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate …

Seeing God in All Things (CD, DVD, MP3)

~~

The great thing about God ¢â‚¬â„¢s love is that it ¢â‚¬â„¢s not determined by the object. God does not love us because we are good. God loves us because God is good. It takes our whole lives for that to sink in because that ¢â‚¬â„¢s not how human love operates.

Human love is largely determined by the attractiveness of the object. When someone is loveable, nice, good, and attractive physically, or has a nice personality, we find it much easier to give ourselves to them. That ¢â‚¬â„¢s the way humans operate, outside of the economy of grace. Divine love is a love that operates in an unqualified way, without making distinctions between persons and without following our personal preferences. We don ¢â‚¬â„¢t have the capacity to receive that notion! Divine love is received by surrender instead of performance or perfection.

Adapted from Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate …

Seeing God in All Things (CD, DVD, MP3)

Prayer:

Help me fall into Your love, O God.

~~

The final word for mysticism, after the optimistic explosion that we usually call hope and the ensuing sense of safety, is an experience of deep rest. It ¢â‚¬â„¢s the verb I ¢â‚¬â„¢m told that is most used by the mystics:  ¢â‚¬Å“resting in God. ¢â‚¬  All this striving and this need to perform, climb, and achieve becomes, on some very real level, unnecessary. It ¢â‚¬â„¢s already here, now. I can stop all this overproduction and over-proving of myself. That ¢â‚¬â„¢s Western and American culture. It ¢â‚¬â„¢s not the Gospel at all.

Many of us have imbibed the culture of unrest so deeply. What got me into men ¢â‚¬â„¢s work is that I found that males are especially driven in that direction. We males just cannot believe that we could be respected, admired, received or loved without some level of performance. So many of us are performers and overachievers to some degree, and we think  ¢â‚¬Å“when we do that ¢â‚¬  we will finally be lovable. Even when we  ¢â‚¬Å“achieve ¢â‚¬  a good day of  ¢â‚¬Å“performing, ¢â‚¬  it will never be enough, because it is inherently self-advancing and therefore self-defeating. We might call it  ¢â‚¬Å“spiritual capitalism. ¢â‚¬ 

Adapted from Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate …

Seeing God in All Things (CD, DVD, MP3)

Prayer: God always entices us through love.

Most of us were taught that God would love us if and when we change. In fact, God loves you so that you can change. What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change, is the experience of love. It is that inherent experience of love that becomes the engine of change. If the mystics say that one way, they say it a thousand ways. But because most of our common religion has not been at the mystical level, we ¢â‚¬â„¢ve been given an inferior message ¢â‚¬”that God loves you  ¢â‚¬Å“when ¢â‚¬  you change ( ¢â‚¬Å“moralism ¢â‚¬ ). It puts it all back on you, which is the opposite of being “saved. ¢â‚¬  Moralism leads you back to  ¢â‚¬Å“navel-gazing ¢â‚¬  and you can never succeed at that level. You are never holy enough, pure enough, refined enough, or loving enough. Whereas, when you fall into God ¢â‚¬â„¢s mercy, when you fall into God ¢â‚¬â„¢s great generosity, you find, seemingly from nowhere, this capacity to change. No one is more surprised than you are. You know it is a gift.

Adapted from Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate …

Seeing God in All Things (CD, DVD, MP3)

Prayer: Help me fall into Your love, O God.

After the first levels of enlargement, connection or union, and some degree of emancipation, mystical experiences lead to a kind of foundational optimism. You would usually call it hope. You wonder where it comes from, especially in the middle of all these terrible things that are happening in the world. Hope is not logical, but a “participation in the very life of God” (just like faith and love, which were called “the theological virtues ¢â‚¬ ).

The next descriptor I ¢â‚¬â„¢d like to add is a sense of safety. Anybody who has ever loved you well or has felt loved by you always feels safe. If you can ¢â‚¬â„¢t feel safe with a person, you can ¢â‚¬â„¢t feel loved by them. You can ¢â‚¬â„¢t trust their love. If, in the presence of God, you don ¢â‚¬â„¢t feel safe, then I don ¢â‚¬â„¢t think it is God ¢â‚¬”it ¢â‚¬â„¢s something else. It ¢â‚¬â„¢s the god that is not God. It ¢â‚¬â„¢s probably what Meister Eckhart is referring to when he says,  ¢â‚¬Å“I pray God to free me from God. ¢â‚¬  He means that the God we all begin with is necessarily a partial God, an imitation God, a word for God, a  ¢â‚¬Å“try on ¢â‚¬  God. But as you go deeper into the journey, I promise you, it will always be more spacious and safer.

Adapted from Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate …

Seeing God in All Things (CD, DVD, MP3)

Prayer: Help me fall into Your love, O God.

~~

Another word to describe mystical moments is emancipation. If it isn ¢â‚¬â„¢t an experience of newfound freedom, I don ¢â‚¬â„¢t think it is an authentic God experience. God is always bigger than you imagined or expected or even hoped. When you see people going to church and becoming smaller instead of larger, you have every reason to question whether the practices or sermons or sacraments or liturgies are opening them to an authentic God experience.

On a practical level such experiences will feel like a new freedom to love, and you wonder where it comes from. Why do I have this new desire, this new capacity to love some new people, to love the old people better, maybe to enter into some kind of new love for the world? I even find my thoughts are more immediately loving.

Clearly, you are participating in a Love that ¢â‚¬â„¢s being given to you. You are not creating this. You are not generating this. It is being generated through you and in you and for you. You are participating in something larger than yourself, and you are just allowing it and trusting it for the pure gift that it is.

Adapted from Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate …

Seeing God in All Things (CD, DVD, MP3)

Prayer:  Help me fall into Your love, O God.

~~

On a first level I see mystical moments as moments of enlargement. Suddenly we ¢â‚¬â„¢re bigger. We don ¢â‚¬â„¢t feel a need to condemn, exclude, divide or separate. Secondarily, mysticism is a deep experience of connectedness or union. Unfortunately, most of us were sent on private paths of perfection which none of us could achieve. The path of union is different than the path of perfection. Perfection gives the impression that by effort or more knowing I can achieve wholeness separate from God, from anyone else, or from connection to the whole. It appeals to our individualism and our ego. It ¢â‚¬â„¢s amazing how much of Christian history sent us on a self-defeating course toward private perfection.

As a result, many people just gave up ¢â‚¬”even many clergy and religious ¢â‚¬”when they saw it never worked. They ended up practical agnostics or practical atheists. They keep up the form, keep up the words, they keep going to church, but there is no longer the inner desire and expectation that is possible with the path of union. Mysticism does not defeat the soul; moralism does.

Adapted from Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate …

Seeing God in All Things (CD, DVD, MP3)

Prayer:  Help me fall into Your love, O God.

EASTER

Friday, April 13, 2012

Easter Friday

We believe in Jesus-Christ. Did anyone ever tell you that those are two distinct faith affirmations? To believe in Jesus is to honor the one man who walked on this earth. To believe in Christ is to include and honor all of creation. “Here comes everybody,” you might say.

That ¢â‚¬â„¢s what Paul means when he says in various places that Jesus is the “first of many brothers and sisters ¢â‚¬  or he is leading “a great triumphal parade. ¢â‚¬  The Christ is the symbolic beginning of the universal procession toward God, love, and life. We are that procession, and no worthiness can get you there ¢â‚¬”only a great willingness to join in.

Adapted from The Cosmic Christ (CD, MP3)

Easter Saturday

Loving God, we love how You love us. We love how You free us. We love what You have given and created to surround us. Help us to recognize, and to rejoice in, what has been given, even in the midst of what is not given. Help us not to doubt all that You have given us, even when we feel our very real shortcomings. We thank You for the promise and sign of Your love in the Eternally Risen Christ, pervading all things in the universe, unbound by any of our categories of logic or theology.

We offer You our lives back in return. We offer You our bodies, our little lives, our racing minds and restless hearts into this one wondrous circle of Love that is You. My life is no longer just about me, but it is all about YOU.

Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, p. 155, day 165

Easter Thursday

 ¢â‚¬Å“You belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God. ¢â‚¬ 

~ 1 Corinthians 3:23

We are all the Body of Christ, and even more so in our togetherness

(1 Corinthians 12:12). Now that is quite Scriptural, and in many sacred texts, but perhaps it just seems too good to be true for most Christians: “There is only Christ, He is everything and He is in everything” (Colossians 3:11). The ego resists such inclusivity, because the ego is that part of you which wants to be special and superior instead.

The Risen Christ is our icon of God’s universal presence, now unlimited by space or time. This is why the resurrection stories always show Jesus ¢â‚¬â„¢ body to be both here and there, passing through doors, visible and not visible, white light itself, everywhere and nowhere, as it were. He cannot be one object because He is in all objects (panentheism). Even to the Magdalene He says “Do not cling to me” (John 20:17). Why? Because you can’t! Christ is consciousness itself pervading all things ¢â‚¬”waiting and hoping for their inner  ¢â‚¬Å“yes ¢â‚¬ !

Adapted from The Cosmic Christ (CD, MP3)

Easter Wednesday

The Risen Christ is the eternal icon of the Divine Presence that is beyond any boundaries or limits of space or time, or any attempts to limit God to here or there. We cannot achieve our divine sonship and our divine daughterhood. All we can do is awaken to it and start drawing upon a universal mystery. We live with an inherent dignity by reason of our very creation, a dignity that no human has given to us and no human can take from us. All bears the divine fingerprint, as St. Bonaventure said.

Our inherent dignity has nothing to do with our race or religion or class. Hindus have it, and Buddhists have it, and so-called “pagans” in Africa have it. They are just as much children of God as we are. Objectively. Theologically. Eternally. Where else do you think they came from? Did some other god create them, except THE GOD? Their divine DNA is identical to ours. We deny our supposed “monotheism” (there is one God) if we believe anything else.

Adapted from The Cosmic Christ (CD, MP3)

Prayer:  Christ is risen! Alleluia!

~~

Easter Monday

In the Risen Christ, God reveals the final state of all reality. God forbids us to accept “as-it-is” in favor of “what-God’s-love-can-make-it.” To believe in Resurrection means to cross limits and transcend boundaries. Because of the promise of the Resurrection of Jesus we realistically can believe that tomorrow can be better than today. We are not bound by any past. There is a future that is created by God, and much bigger than our own efforts.

We should not just believe in some kind of survival or immortality or just “life after death” ¢â‚¬”but Resurrection, an utterly new creation, a transformation into Love that is promised as the final chapter of all history. That is why a true Christian has to be an optimist. In fact, if you are not an optimist, you haven’t got it yet.

Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, p. 150, day 159

Easter Tuesday

The voluntary self-gift of Jesus on the cross was his free acceptance of all creation in its weakness and imperfection. He chose to become a divine brother to humanity, and by giving himself to God totally, he invites all of his brothers and sisters with him into that same relationship of belonging. “Chosen in Christ from all eternity” is the way Ephesians puts it (1:4).

The raising up of Jesus (which is the correct way to say it) is the confirmation of God’s standing and universal relationship with what he created (“covenant love”). Jesus stands forever as our Promise, our Guarantee, and our Victory (1 Corinthians 1:30) of what God is doing everywhere and all the time. The only way you can absent yourself from this victory is to stand alone and apart. Inside communion you are forever safe and saved.

Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, p. 151, day 161

Prayer: