resting in wonder...

NOTE: Having just returned from my community in L'Arche Ottawa for the wedding celebration of H and R - as well as an evening of conversation re: forgiveness - I am full to overflowing. This reflection started a week ago, but rings evermore true today.

"..and you shall rest in wonder." In the on-going, on-line wisdom school course I
am currently engaging as my study-contemplation practice for the fall season, a verse from the Gospel of Thomas spoke to me deeply. It comes from a variation on a koan Jesus shared: "seek and ye shall find." The way Thomas tells it, however, the deeper intent for real life comes into focus: we seek when we must, what we find is often unsettling, but rest comes to us when we allow wonder to be the lens through which we see reality. In this, the holy and the human embrace. The gospel of Thomas makes clear that: our obsession with control is a trap, our perspective must be turned upside-down before we are willing trust God profoundly, and our hearts and minds will be broken so that learn to surrender or relinquish to a love greater than our imagination. That certainly has been my experience: fear, disorientation, and turmoil all came before peace. Peggy Faye and Susan Gale write in Indigo Children: 

People get blocked by living: hurrying and consuming things of no value thinking this is life. Real life is from a point within that radiates out to the world, a point within filled with serenity and assurance that we are loved, that we have a role to play in this world...This is the center of the real self, the best place to be. If you can live from this place, you will be Love's messenger. (https://friendsofsilence.net)

Finding our center isn't easy. Nor automatic.  Shedding incidentals, letting go of tricks that used to work but have now outlived their usefulness, and forsaking cultural distractions takes time. And courage. And patience. Surrender is painful. How did Jesus put it: "Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But in its death, it can bear much fruit." (John 12) I suspect Thomas Merton was creatively playing with this text and others when he wrote that "true freedom" is: "a little kernel of gold (within) which is the essence of you." Discarding the anxiety of Augustine's doctrine of original sin, Merton knew that this kernel of gold (or eternal diamond) is "what we might call the name of God we truly bear, or the inmost quality of our own aliveness." (Bourgeault, Wisdom Way of Knowing, p. 77)

Our real freedom is to be able to come and go from that center, and to be able to do without anything that is not immediately connected to that center. Because when you die, that is all that is left. When we die, everything is destroyed except for this one thing, which is our reality, and which is the reality that God preservers forever...the freedom that matters is the capacity to be in touch with that center. Because it is from that center that everything else comes. (Merton in Bourgeault, p. 77)

This is the pearl of great price. The treasure hidden in the field. The heart of our being that costs our life so that we might grasp, trust, honor, and embrace a new life saturated with grace. Bourgeault adds an important insight: Too often "in our usual way of looking at things we... equate originality with our uniqueness." That is, we confuse our passions for God's will. The often wise Joseph Campbell popularized this mistake, advising us to "follow our bliss." Go where we sense our feelings calling us and we will know peace. But feelings are not the whole truth. They are clues, but rarely the whole story.  Our emotions need evaluation as well as guidance before they can reveal the sacred. Frederick Buechner cut through pop psychology and spoke true wisdom when he wrote that our calling in life is "the place where our deepest gladness meets the world's greatest need." This is the marriage of heaven and earth, the integration of the holy with the human, the mysterious and gracious encounter with joy the ancient Psalmist celebrated in song: "Mercy and truth are met together; justice and peace have kissed each other." (Psalm 85) Calling as wonder embracing compassion carries beyond self-gratification to awe.

But this is always unsettling - especially in a consumer culture. We have been trained by the masters of manipulation and marketing to believe that originality, yea our very life's purpose, is to be unique. Special. Yet "what passes for 'originality' in art and culture today," Bourgeault writes, "is simply (our) trying to be different - making a statement for its own sake."

The actual meaning of the word original... doesn't mean trying to be different. It means being connected to the origin. You can't be original by trying to be original. You become original by staying true to what your heart sees. (Wisdom, p. 87)

This, too is unsettling. The Wisdom traditions of all spiritualities differentiate between the heart as the center of our emotions and the heart as the calm core of being that integrates body, mind, and soul beyond feelings. The heart is "not our subjective experiences (with their) personal and emotional reactions to everything," but that place within that can hold paradox - both/and instead of binary either/or - "without needing to resolve, close down, or protect oneself from the pain that ambiguity always brings." (Bourgeault, p. 35)

For this is how we arrive at rest: when we are able to trust life through the lens of awe. Wonder. Mystery. Bourgeault recalls a time for us when all we could do is weep. A season when grief consumed us and our world seemed steeped in sorrow. And then, suddenly, when our tears are complete, we looked up and saw the stars. Or the sun. Or heard the sound of a friend's music. Or saw the snow. Or our dog. Or cat. Or a flock of wild geese. Or sand hill cranes. And at once we were at peace, in communion with what has always been and always will be. Yet nothing had changed except, of course, our own capacity to trust grace. To live within a deeper and larger vessel, one guided by wonder and love.

The deeper I trust, the more the old borders that once gave me order loose their significance. I know from my own tears, too - and the aftermath of my weeping - that relinquishing old certainties can be exhausting. Essential, to be sure, but still terrifying. When I am falling through my fear it always feels endless. But it never lasts. What's more, on the other side, in time I find more and more rest. This is, I suspect, part of what Jesus was getting at when he told us to seek when we must, trusting that we will be unsettled by the peace he gives because it is not the peace of this world.

Being in community this week was grounding: I had a small gift to share at the start of the ceremony and then I was free to settle into the rhythm of being together with those I love. This felt original in the truest sense of the word. At one point in the celebration, a L'Arche sacrament was shared as a candle was passed around the room of 150+ people and everyone was invited to offer a blessing. As I savored the variety of ways this diverse community lifted one another up, a few truths came into focus. First, in L'Arche it is foundational that we take the time - and create the respect and safety - for everyone present to participate as fully as they desire. There is no rushing when it comes to tending the soul of the community.  Yes, the wider world runs according to deadlines and this feast started on time. But built into this celebration was a gentle pacing so that we all were free to take the time we needed to express our love. And second, there was no "right" way to express this love. Some offered gestures. Some used words. Some took time, others were brief. Some were sung and some were silent. But each nourished the whole. Jesus was not kidding when he said: "The presence of God is very near. Very near indeed."

Imagine my surprise when the Bible reading for this ceremony was Mark 1: 44-46: "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field... and when it was found the owner was filled with joy and sold all he had to claim it." Earlier in the week, one of the ffacilitators at the night of forgiveness said, "So often we miss what is truly important... but our vulnerability teaches us that it doesn't have to be this way." Life can be different. Life can be holy. Life can be embraced with awe and wonder. This doesn't erase or hide the pain. There is still suffering. And injustice to challenge. But like Bourgeault puts it at the close of one chapter in her wisdom book: it can be different, too:

Imagine what it might be life, for ourselves and for our planet, to taste (such) freedom.Rather than rushing around in exhaustion to exercise our "choices" in clothing, cars, jobs, and vacations, to maximize the selfhood that is illusory anyway, we would learn to give and take with life in the effortless freedom of inner authenticity. Rather than something to be defended, freedom would simply be something to be lived. But in living it fro that place of wholeness, allowing our individual authenticity to unfold from the whole life... we might also come to discover the music pouring through us is both richer and more universal that in our wildest imaginings.