Heaven Now

The Gate of Heaven
Thursday, May 2, 2019

James Finley, one of the Center for Action and Contemplation’s core faculty members, was a spiritual directee of Thomas Merton (1915–1968) at the Abbey of Gethsemani. Drawing from this experience and his own insights as a student of the mystics and a clinical psychologist, Finley helps us get a glimpse of heaven.

When Merton told me that “one thing for sure about heaven is that there is not going to be much of you there,” he was, I think, referring to the mystery that even now we are in God’s kingdom. And that even now we can begin to realize it if we but die to egocentric self-seeking and seek God’s will with a pure heart.

Because God is everywhere God is likewise no-where, meaning there is no “where” in which we can see God “out there.” Closer to us than we are to ourselves, God is too close to see. God is the heart of our heart, the hope of our hopes, the love of our love, the ground of our being.

Where must we go to see God? Nowhere! What can we do to have God? Nothing! All we can do, at least for a moment (an eternal moment) is to abandon all doing and be who we are in God and open ourselves to God’s life within us. It is then that we will at once see God and ourselves in a unity of divine love.

In fidelity to silent prayer there is unveiled the possibility of infinite growth in union with God. We can be so transformed through this unveiling that we existentially realize within us that “for me to live is Christ” [Philippians 1:21]. We realize obscurely in our being, that our simple, concrete acts are open to a transformation through which they are “not only Godlike, but they become God’s own acts.” [1]

There is nowhere to go. There is nothing to do. God is upon and within us. In the midst of our humble duties, our poor, weak selves, our simple being who we are, we can say with Jacob with overwhelming gratitude: “Truly this is the house of God and the gate of heaven and I knew it not” [see Genesis 28:16-17]. [2]

Wednesday, May 1, 2019

Anyone who wants to save his life must lose it. Anyone who loses her life will find it. —Matthew 16:25

This passage from Matthew is a very strong, almost brutal statement from Jesus. It has perhaps been discussed, dismissed, misunderstood, and conveniently forgotten more than almost anything he said. It is just too counter-intuitive.

I believe Jesus says this in such a strong and absolute way because he knows that the human ego fixes upon roles, titles, status symbols, and concocted self-images;       and he wants us to know that these are passing creations of our own minds and culture. They are not, in that sense, objectively “real.” Nor are they our true and deepest self. All of these images must die if we want the Real, but they do not die easily because we have mistaken them for elements of our real self for most of our life. We all suffer from a tragic case of mistaken identity.

The Real is that to which all the world religions point when they speak of heaven, nirvana, bliss, eternity, or enlightenment. Our mistake was that most Christians delayed this inner state until after death. This distorted and misshaped the spiritual search, making it into a cheap reward and punishment system—for later. Honestly, it too often attracted fear-based or self-interested people, not really lovers.

The human ego wants two things: It wants to be separate and it wants to be superior! This is why Jesus says this self must “die” for something much better to be “found.” As long as the ego is in control, not much new will ever happen.

Sit with this mystery as you read the following poem by David Whyte:

After the good earth
where the body knows itself to be real
and the mad flight
where it gives itself to the world,
we give ourselves to the rhythm of love
leaving the breath
to know its way home. 

And after the first pure fall,
the last letting go, and the calm
breath where we go to rest,
we’ll return again to find it
and feel again the body welcomed,
the body held,
the strong arms of the world,
the water, the waking at dawn
and the thankful, almost forgotten,
curling to sleep with the dark. 

The old wild place beyond all shame. [1]

If authentic God-experience first inspires you to overcome the primary split between yourself and the Divine, then it should also inspire you to overcome the split between yourself and the rest of creation. For many people, union with the Divine is experienced in nature, with animals, through a sense of awe, in moments of pure love, silence, inner or outer music, or some kind of Franciscan “Brother Sun and Sister Moon” experience.

Mystical experience connects us and just keeps connecting at ever-wider levels, breadths, and depths, “until God can be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28) or, as Paul also says, “The world, life and death, the present and the future are all your servants, for you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God” (1 Corinthians 3:22-23). Full salvation is finally universal belonging and universal connecting. Our common word for that is some kind of “heaven.”