ἐκένωσεν
Okay, look, I love Father Richard, and, no Ifs, Ands or Buts, I'm not making fun of anybody; If, And, or But this morning twenty-one floors above PCB's sugar white sand, roaring surf, and the bitter cold predawn darkness of Wednesday, November 28, the lights of a large ship a couple miles offshore, I open my email, the first thing to catch my eye is his daily meditation, which I eagerly open only to find it's share a cup of tea with Goldie. See, I'm not a spiritual person, nor contemplative, and what I hear in the background while reading this is spooky music. Advent must be here already, four or five days early. Read this:
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Joy proceeds from the inner realization of union with God, which descends upon us at ever deeper levels as we walk our faith journey. This deepening is the goal of Christian contemplation and is the heart of perennial wisdom from every faith. This is how contemplatives “know” things: The soul itself is an image of God, to which God is so present that the soul can actually grasp God, and, as Bonaventure wrote, “is capable of possessing [God] and of being a partaker in [God].” Ironically, it is in letting go that we most truly “possess” God and participate in God’s fullness.
Jesus modeled and taught contemplative prayer. He invited us to “go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret” (Matthew 6:6). Our beloved Father Thomas Keating (1923–2018), who recently passed away, explained how such prayer helps us access the joy of experiential union with God:
In Jesus’ formula for waking up to who we are, he suggests entering this inner room. Then he says shut the door, meaning stop the interior dialogue. Get free or detached from our over-identifications with our thoughts, experiences, past life, future hopes. It doesn’t mean leaving anything behind, but changing your attitude to everything, so it’s a non-possessive attitude, which is the nature of [God] or the Beloved, or the Ultimate Reality. . . .
[We are] in the process of awakening to the divine image within us, the supernatural organism where faith, hope, and charity, the divine indwelling, and the fruits and the gifts of the Spirit are sitting, so to speak, in our ontological unconscious, gathering dust, waiting to be used. And they can’t come into full action until our over-identification with the false self and its programs for happiness that can’t possibly work have been reduced.
So life, then, is constant death and resurrection at every moment. We die to our own will and enter the present moment by consenting to whatever it is, either by accepting it or doing something that the Spirit suggests to improve the situation. This divine enlightening process sometimes gives us an Aha! experience. It’s still on the egoic level, so it’s penetrated with some misunderstandings, but nonetheless, this is what Alleluia means. “Aahh”—this is the primordial sound that that you hear in Allah or in Alleluia or in Aum [Om] as the Hindus put it. It’s waking up!
. . . Everybody has personal, unique relationship with God and capacity to manifest something of that infinite goodness that is a torrent that simply moves from relationship to relationship in the Trinity in a kind of moving ocean of infinite love that is reaching out and drawing everybody back through the unspeakable groanings of the Spirit that dwells even in matter [see Romans 8:22-23], but especially in our inmost being and conscience, calling us into freedom, into peace, into joy, which we already possess at the hidden level. That’s why we need to find out who we are!
We are already all these things. We just think we aren’t. Stop thinking, and you’ll find out.
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Reading it tires me out. Speaking of tiring, yesterday we drove into town (town is the desolated mess that is PC, FL 32401) and stopped by 7H only to discover that the destructors have torn out even more walls and ceiling, now in the living room, the entire Bay-side wall! There's a pathway through all our furniture, which now is pushed and pressed back and together and covered with heavy, thick plastic, and some of it jammed into what was once our bedroom! The sight of it, simply being there in it, brings on instant exhaustion bordering on hopelessness, and the song "Sail away with me, to another world" and I feel myself detaching from all that is of a physical nature and wanting, needing, simply to Be, like maybe in my tiny cell with a bed, a chair, a table and a lamp, a pillow, two sheets and a blanket that I had that time for a week's retreat more than three decades ago at SSJE monastery in New England: it was all I needed, and it was too plain ever to emotionally attach to as I was attached to all my "things" in 7H. I want, need, κενόω - - kenosis, I empty myself in the sense of Philippians 2:7 and be done with stuff, just take it, take what you want; let me go, silent, I'll be in my cell if you need me, just ring the bell calling me to supper and Hours. In every loss there's a gain, and I'm beginning to get it.
T
Father Richard Rohr's daily meditation for Wednesday, 28 Nov 2018
21 floors above the beach: four garage floors then seventeen condo floors
ekenoosen - emptied
++++++++
Joy proceeds from the inner realization of union with God, which descends upon us at ever deeper levels as we walk our faith journey. This deepening is the goal of Christian contemplation and is the heart of perennial wisdom from every faith. This is how contemplatives “know” things: The soul itself is an image of God, to which God is so present that the soul can actually grasp God, and, as Bonaventure wrote, “is capable of possessing [God] and of being a partaker in [God].” Ironically, it is in letting go that we most truly “possess” God and participate in God’s fullness.
Jesus modeled and taught contemplative prayer. He invited us to “go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret” (Matthew 6:6). Our beloved Father Thomas Keating (1923–2018), who recently passed away, explained how such prayer helps us access the joy of experiential union with God:
In Jesus’ formula for waking up to who we are, he suggests entering this inner room. Then he says shut the door, meaning stop the interior dialogue. Get free or detached from our over-identifications with our thoughts, experiences, past life, future hopes. It doesn’t mean leaving anything behind, but changing your attitude to everything, so it’s a non-possessive attitude, which is the nature of [God] or the Beloved, or the Ultimate Reality. . . .
[We are] in the process of awakening to the divine image within us, the supernatural organism where faith, hope, and charity, the divine indwelling, and the fruits and the gifts of the Spirit are sitting, so to speak, in our ontological unconscious, gathering dust, waiting to be used. And they can’t come into full action until our over-identification with the false self and its programs for happiness that can’t possibly work have been reduced.
So life, then, is constant death and resurrection at every moment. We die to our own will and enter the present moment by consenting to whatever it is, either by accepting it or doing something that the Spirit suggests to improve the situation. This divine enlightening process sometimes gives us an Aha! experience. It’s still on the egoic level, so it’s penetrated with some misunderstandings, but nonetheless, this is what Alleluia means. “Aahh”—this is the primordial sound that that you hear in Allah or in Alleluia or in Aum [Om] as the Hindus put it. It’s waking up!
. . . Everybody has personal, unique relationship with God and capacity to manifest something of that infinite goodness that is a torrent that simply moves from relationship to relationship in the Trinity in a kind of moving ocean of infinite love that is reaching out and drawing everybody back through the unspeakable groanings of the Spirit that dwells even in matter [see Romans 8:22-23], but especially in our inmost being and conscience, calling us into freedom, into peace, into joy, which we already possess at the hidden level. That’s why we need to find out who we are!
We are already all these things. We just think we aren’t. Stop thinking, and you’ll find out.
+++++++++++++
Reading it tires me out. Speaking of tiring, yesterday we drove into town (town is the desolated mess that is PC, FL 32401) and stopped by 7H only to discover that the destructors have torn out even more walls and ceiling, now in the living room, the entire Bay-side wall! There's a pathway through all our furniture, which now is pushed and pressed back and together and covered with heavy, thick plastic, and some of it jammed into what was once our bedroom! The sight of it, simply being there in it, brings on instant exhaustion bordering on hopelessness, and the song "Sail away with me, to another world" and I feel myself detaching from all that is of a physical nature and wanting, needing, simply to Be, like maybe in my tiny cell with a bed, a chair, a table and a lamp, a pillow, two sheets and a blanket that I had that time for a week's retreat more than three decades ago at SSJE monastery in New England: it was all I needed, and it was too plain ever to emotionally attach to as I was attached to all my "things" in 7H. I want, need, κενόω - - kenosis, I empty myself in the sense of Philippians 2:7 and be done with stuff, just take it, take what you want; let me go, silent, I'll be in my cell if you need me, just ring the bell calling me to supper and Hours. In every loss there's a gain, and I'm beginning to get it.
T
Father Richard Rohr's daily meditation for Wednesday, 28 Nov 2018
21 floors above the beach: four garage floors then seventeen condo floors
ekenoosen - emptied