Sustained Breath by Breath

CAC teacher James Finley shares how he experienced “the oneness of presence that alone is ultimately real” when he was a monk at the Abbey of Gethsemane:  

One day as I walked back and forth in the loft of the barn reading the Psalms, I began to realize that what we tend to think of as the air is actually God. In a subtle, interior way I sensed that I was walking back and forth in the atmospheric, all-encompassing presence of God, who was sustaining me breath by breath….  

The most intimate depth of this awakening moment was a simple awareness that God, who was sustaining my life breath by breath, knew me through and through as mercy within mercy within mercy. I was so overtaken by the intimate depths of my very presence being accessed by the presence of God in this way that I stopped reading the Psalms and simply sat on a bale of straw breathing God as I looked out over the meadow….  

What was even more amazing is that this graced awareness of God and I inhaling and exhaling ourselves into each other continued for the next three days. It’s not that I walked around in some kind of trance. Quite the opposite, actually, in that I felt very present to each thing that I did throughout the day, but present in a pervasive underlying awareness of being in the presence of God, sustaining me breath by breath, knowing me through and through with an infused sense of mercy without end.  

The third day of my God-breathing way of life fell on a Sunday…. As I walked along [a] narrow dirt path with its overarching canopy of trees, I paused and touched a leaf hanging from a low-lying branch. As I touched the leaf, I looked up and saw a single cloud hanging in the clear blue sky and whispered, “It’s one!” The infinite presence of God I was breathing, the cloud in the sky, the leaf I was touching, the earth on which I was standing, and the immediacy of feeling myself blessed and awakened to this all-encompassing presence were, in that instant, realized to be inexplicably and all-pervasively one. Please know that the words I am using in attempting to describe this intimately realized oneness are impoverished in a superficial, wordy kind of way compared to the transcendent oneness beyond words that I was so graced and privileged to experience.  

Moved by the all-encompassing presence in which I was immersed, I walked off the path onto a field, where I sat in the tall grass moved by a strong wind with the blue sky overhead, all of which were experienced as bodying forth the endless diversity of the oneness of presence that alone is ultimately real.  

[40] Dangerous Moment

Am I going to do a good deed? Then, of all times—Father into thy hands: lest the enemy should have me now.

Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (pp. 22-23). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

God’s Sacred Book of Nature

Richard Rohr believes that nature has been revealing God long before the Bible and Church came to be:  

Nature itself is the primary Bible. The world is the locus of the sacred and provides all the metaphors that the soul needs for its growth.  

If you scale chronological history down to the span of one year, with the Big Bang on January 1, then our species, Homo sapiens, doesn’t appear until 11:59 p.m. on December 31. That means our written Bible and the Church appeared in the last nanosecond of December 31. I can’t believe that God had nothing to say until the last moment. Rather, as both Paul and Thomas Aquinas say, God has been revealing God’s love, goodness, and beauty since the very beginning through the natural world of creation (see Romans 1:20). “God looked at everything God had made and found it very good” (Genesis 1:31).  

Acknowledging the intrinsic value and beauty of creation, elements, plants, and animals is a major paradigm shift for most Western and cultural Christians. We limited God’s love and salvation to our own human species, and even then, we did not have enough love to go around for all of humanity! God ended up looking quite miserly and inept, to be honest.  

Read, instead, the Book of Wisdom: 

How dull are all people who, from the things-that-are, have not been able to discover God-Who-Is, or by studying the good works have failed to recognize the Artist…. Through the grandeur and beauty of the creatures we may, by analogy, contemplate their Author (13:1, 5). [1] 

Author Barbara Mahany reads God’s sacred Book of Nature in her own backyard and throughout creation: 

I read intently the Book of Nature, even here in my humble plot of earth … where a rambunctious tucked-away garden offers me respite and a place for genuflection…. 

Into its pages I step in the murky hour just before the dawn, before the rising sun stages its rehearsal, bleeds pink into the edge of night. It’s where you might find me, nose pressed to the glass, when the softening winter sky at last exhales and the first tumble of snowflakes fall, blanketing the world in a quiet like no other. Or, at twilight, the in-between hour when day dissolves into darkness, when on a summer’s eve I surrender to the rising surround sound of crickets and keep watch till the starkeepers trot out the stars…. 

And so the beautiful, the majestic, the intimate, and the sweeping is pressed onto the pages of the librum naturae, the Book of Nature. [2] 

Mahany shares this observation from Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941), an English theologian and mystic:  

The very meaning of Creation is seen to be an act of worship, a devoted proclamation of the splendour, the wonder, and the beauty of God. In this great Sanctus, all things justify their being and have their place. [3]  

[39] Troubled Soul

Troubled soul, thou are not bound to feel but thou art bound to arise. God loves thee whether thou feelest or not. Thou canst not love when thou wilt, but thou art bound to fight the hatred in thee to the last. Try not to feel good when thou art not good, but cry to Him who is good. He changes not because thou changest. Nay, He has an especial tenderness of love toward thee for that thou art in the dark and hast no light, and His heart is glad when thou doest arise and say, “I will go to my Father.”…Fold the arms of thy faith, and wait in the quietness until light goes up in thy darkness. For the arms of thy Faith I say, but not of thy Action: bethink thee of something that thou oughtest to do, and go to do it, if it be but the sweeping of a room, or the preparing of a meal, or a visit to a friend. Heed not thy feeling: Do thy work.

Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (p. 22). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

The Trinity Can Only Be Experienced

On Trinity Sunday in 2013, Father Richard had just returned from an interfaith gathering with the Dalai Lama and representatives from many world religions. Richard shared:  

Perhaps the most quoted line from the Dalai Lama is, “My religion is kindness.” Isn’t that simple? “My religion is kindness.” He asked, really challenging us from other world religions, “How do you teach kindness or compassion and how does this come from your understanding of God?” I had the job of representing the Christian tradition; I thought the job was rather easy, because of the feast we celebrate today of God as Trinity.  

Sadly, the doctrine of the Trinity hasn’t exercised much influence in the Christian understanding of God. If most Christians—Catholic or Protestant—are questioned about their real image of God, it’s generally an old man sitting on a throne. He’s upset half the time and it’s our job to make this god happy. This, of course, has almost nothing to do with our actual doctrine on the nature of God. What our tradition believes is that God is a fountain fullness of love, a water wheel flowing constantly in one direction: Father to Son, Son to Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit to Father—always outflowing, always outpoured, always giving, never taking, but only receiving what the other gives. It would take the rest of your life to try to comprehend what that means! 

Many of us say we believe in the Trinity—but we really don’t, because we don’t know what to do with it. We can’t even imagine it; all of our metaphors are simply words trying to grab at the reality, at the experience of God that ultimately can’t be verbalized. It can only be experienced. [1] 

The medieval mystic Julian of Norwich (1343–c. 1416) is one who experienced the Trinity. She had multiple visions of God or “showings” during a near-death illness. Through CAC friend Mirabai Starr’s translation, Julian describes her encounter with the Trinity:  

In the midst of this showing the blessed Trinity also revealed itself to me and filled my heart to overflowing with joy. I realized that this is what it will be like in the world to come, for all beings, and for all time. For the Trinity is God, and God is the Trinity. The Trinity is our creator and our sustainer, our Beloved forever and ever, our endless joy and bliss. I saw all this in the first revelation and in every showing after that. Whenever Christ appeared, I seemed to understand the blessed Trinity, as well.  

“Benedicte domine!” I cried. “Blessed be the Lord!” I said, in a full voice, with reverence and intention, in awe and amazement. I was thoroughly astonished that he who is so great—so holy and majestic—would bother to mingle with such a homely creature as I. What I realized was that our Lord Jesus Christ, moved by loving compassion … wanted to bolster me with his comfort. [2]  

All Life Is Sacred

Father Richard writes of the sacred nature of all life:  

Almost every religion’s history begins with one massive misperception; namely, making a fatal distinction between the sacred and the profane. Religions often put all their emphasis on creating sacred places, sacred time, and sacred actions. While I fully appreciate the need for this, it unfortunately leaves most of life “un-sacred.”  

In authentic mystical moments, any clear distinction between sacred and profane quickly falls apart. Afterward, one knows all the world is sacred because most of the time such moments happen in so-called secular settings. For examples, look at the lives of Abraham and Sarah, Moses, Elijah, Mary, and Jesus. Few, if any, of their “sacred” moments happened in “holy” places, but simply wherever they were. Our Franciscan official motto is Deus Meus et Omnia, “My God and all things.” Once we recognize the Christ as the universal truth of matter and spirit working together as one, then everything is holy. Once we surrender to this Christ mystery in our oh-so-ordinary selves and bodies, we begin to see it in every other ordinary place too.

We don’t have to go to sacred places to pray or wait for holy days for good things to happen. We can pray always, and everything that happens is potentially sacred if we allow it to be. Once we can accept that God is in all circumstances, and that God can and will use even bad situations for good, then everything becomes an occasion for good and an occasion for God. “This is the day God has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24).  

Our task is to find the good, the true, and the beautiful in everything—even, and most especially, in the problematic. The bad is never strong enough to counteract the good. We can most easily learn this through some form of contemplative practice. In contemplation we learn to trust our Vital Center over all the passing snags of emotions and obsessive thinking. Once we deepen contact with our strong and loving soul, which is also the Indwelling Spirit, we are no longer pulled to and fro with every passing feeling. This is the peace that Jesus gives, a peace that nothing else can give, and that no one can take from us (see John 14:27).  

Divine Incarnation took the form of an Indwelling Presence in every human soul and surely all creatures in some rudimentary way. Ironically, our human freedom gives us the ability to stop such a train and refuse to jump on board our own life. Angels, animals, trees, water, and yes, bread and wine seem to fully accept and enjoy their wondrous fate. Only we humans resist and deny our core identities. We can cause great havoc and thus must be somehow boundaried and contained. The only way we ourselves can refuse to jump onto the train of life is by any negative game of exclusion or unlove—even of ourselves. Everything belongs, including us.  

from George MacDonald

[38] The Highest Condition of the Human Will

The highest condition of the human will is in sight…. I say not the highest condition of the Human Being; that surely lies in the Beatific Vision, in the sight of God. But the highest condition of the Human Will, as distinct, not as separated from God, is when, not seeing God, not seeming to itself to grasp Him at all, it yet holds Him fast.

Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (pp. 21-22). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.