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Mystical presence

This morning I got up at 5:20 am. I try to run on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and occasionally on other days as well. This morning I got in a five mile run. It’s a great way to stay in shape and it’s a contemplative time for me as well. During the run I began to think of my post “There is a Light”.  I’m still thinking about it and the more I ponder the more I realize that what I said is not clear, but then again it’s impossible to clarify a mystical concept. I believe that somewhere along the line mysticism got neatly removed from common Christianity. I don’t know when it happened but suffice to say there is real hunger to know the mystical Christ. Intellectual Christianity where people can recite doctrine, dogma and even scripture is prevalent in many of churches I’ve experienced. That sort of approach leaves me thirsting for the mystical presence. I think of Psalm 63, “O God, you are my God– for you I long! For you my body yearns; for you my soul thirsts, like a land parched, lifeless, and without water.” The psalm continues, “So I look to you in the sanctuary to see your power and glory.”  For me the sanctuary can be Holy Peace Chapel, the Abbey of the Genesee, Mt. Saviour Monastery. Those places open me up to the presence of Christ that is all around me. But if I limit God’s presence to certain places, then I am defining God and I don’t believe that God can be defined. There must be a metanoia for each believer wherein each comes to see God in all. That is what happened for St. Francis of Assisi and all the other mystics. When I begin to see God in all, all becomes sacred.  The more my eyes are opened to the sacred around me, the more aware I am of the presence of the sacred in my life. I’ll write more, but this is a good beginning. Peace.

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There is a light

I’ve just returned from a Cyprian Consiglio Concert at St. Bonaventure University Chapel. Cyprian is in our area for a contemplative retreat week that is occurring at Mt. Irenaeus, Franciscan Mountain Retreat. Cyprian’s music is more than religious. It is an invitation to mysticism. His music draws on Sufi, Hindu, Buddhist and Christian traditions. He has been deeply influenced by Bede Griffiths. Cyprian is a Camaldolese monk from New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California. His concert lasted 90 minutes and included material from all his albums including his most recent. His music is a celebration of the divine in all of us and in all creation.

One of Cyprian’s songs entitled “There is a light” proclaims that “there is a light that has overcome the darkness, there is no darkness that can overcome the light.” Paula, Jeff and others have written eloquently about the cheapening of life by our culture. I think there is a deeper soul sickness than is touched by ordinary religious life. Western culture and that includes western theology has severed the umbilical cord that connects us to the divine. We’ve got God in box. We bring that box out on Sundays or Saturdays and we put on our church faces and piously proclaim our faith in God and scripture. That all changes once we leave our respective churches because there is no connection between what happened in the sanctuary and what happens outside. The sacred is not missing in our world. We’re missing the sacred.

We have politicians and clerics who want to post the Ten Commandments in public squares and public buildings. It’s more important that those precepts are written on our hearts and that we live like they were. It’s no wonder that many in the west are drawn to mystics from the east because somewhere along the line we’ve lost the mystical in our lives. The mission of Christ was not primarily to atone for sins by death upon a cross, but to show the way to experience unity with the divine. When we see ourselves as divinely interconnected we are less likely to dehumanize and kill each other with abortion, pornography and war. Peace.

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Mystical thought

Today was Trinity Sunday. Fr. Bob’s homily was of course about the Trinity. This is a difficult concept to grasp. Bob spent some time telling us how the concept of the trinity was difficult for the apostles. The idea of God in three persons has always been very abstract for me. I can’t really get my head around such an idea. The church never explains the trinity, instead it prefers to shroud it in mystery. Up until today that was as far as I got. As I sat there this morning it occurred to me that mystery and mystical are taken from the same root word. There is no way to know or to intellectualize a mystery. It is ethereal by its very nature and cannot be known. Peace.

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Today’s gospel

I was reading today’s gospel in the lectionary, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations,baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” In thinking about how best to accomplish this I am reminded of an earlier post about hospitality with a quote from Henri Nouwen. What Henri Nouwen says about hospitality is so akin to what I’ve experienced at Mt. Irenaeus that it made me think that the best preaching is not sermonizing but in living the gospel and inviting others into our space. Invitation and hospitality are part and parcel of acceptance. I think it’s necessary to accept and embrace the other and to make them a part of our space. That’s also very Franciscan. Francis said, “preach the gospel everyday and only use words when necessary.” Maybe what we don’t say, says way more about the gospel. Peace.

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gospel, nouwen, st. francis, hospitality