20. Spirituality is not to be learned by running away from things.

Saturday, October 20, 2018

“Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.” ~ Meister Eckhart

This also builds on my earlier thoughts about having a peaceful heart. There is no merit to mistaking the calm that might grow out of avoiding the world for true peace which comes from facing the world and being able to allow trust in God. If we push through fear, anger or what ever negative emotion we might be feeling we can open ourselves up to the power of God.

If we avoid the world and hide from it, we hide ourselves from the face of God. He can see us and he sees us always but we can't see him if we avoid him through rejection of his created world no matter where we might be in the world. Eckhart says we must penetrate things to find God. What are those things? They are things our ego constructs in an ill-fated effort to protects. The need to control. The desire to avoid negativity and controversy. The bruising we take which creates a sense humility and all of these things defeat what inkling of hope we might hold.

There is also another clear indictment of our wish to find peace and to find God by separating ourselves from God, to seek those thin places the Irish love to embrace because we believe we can find solace there. Solace might be healing and allow us to more quickly let go of things that distract us but we can not allow be overly reliant on exterior solitude because it is so often not available to us. We cannot just withdraw when we need to turn within to find God.

My brushes with Benedictine spirituality remind me that there is a great importance for being in one place, to be stable and not inclined to move from one place to another in a search for peace because true peace is not out there somewhere but is in here, inside us in the soul.

It often seems prudent to turn away, to hide and be out of the light but the comfort is illusory and temporary. The trouble remains and holds power of us it as long as it give it the authority to do so. Only when we connect with God can we find peace.

19. One person who has mastered life is better than a thousand persons who have mastered only the contents of books.

Friday, October 19, 2018

“One person who has mastered life is better than a thousand persons who have mastered only the contents of books, but no one can get anything out of life without God.” ~ Meister Eckhart

This is truly fascinating to hear from a medieval period mystic because what is offered is truly profound and practical. We are instructed that actual experience is far more valuable than theoretical knowledge acquired but not tested under the fire of daily life.

This is a theme which reoccurs time and time again through his teachings. Instead of studying how to prayer and never actually taking the time to pray, just skip to the basics and pray. We can learn more by doing than reading. We experience growth from actual results rather than just building a block of information which may or may not be of practical value.

In this instance, if asked I would have to confess I tend more toward learning than doing even after piling up a lifetime of experience. For me, learning is the easy part. I sit back and let my mind bounce from topic to topic and from source to source. I must embrace the fact I can't think or learn my way to the kind of deep relationship I desire with God. Once I get some basic tools, I am called to use them. To pray. To sink into the darkness, not of oblivion, but, rather into place where darkness does not represent an end of all things but the beginning of knowing God is unknowable in all ways and in all things save one, love. Richard Rohr says, and I am sure he did not say it first, that the only way for us to know God is to know his love.

This love should empower me to pray and to remember to simply talk with him. He knows what I have that needs to be said. I know I need to say it but I don't know all that I need to say because much lies buried within.

When I first started with contemplation I quickly hit a road block. At first, the more I practiced and prayed the more comfort I experienced but then something else began to happen, something I did not know to expect. As my inner soul became more comfortable, it gained the courage to open up long forgotten and deeply buried boxes of secrets. Where there was once comfort, I found great pain as found myself having to confront the myriad of broken relationships damaged by my ego's relentless drive to feed itself. I had done wrong to others. I was still doing wrong to others. I felt myself to be wronged but the hurts I felt seemed to be justified because of sinful and unholy nature. I deserved the pain I felt. I was certain I earned it.

The enormity of it all darkened my countenance and destroyed my self confidence. I fell into depression and nearly tailed all the way into helplessness.

I have emerged and I feel have been treading water aimlessly for most of the past two years. That is not true. I have done much work. I have began to see the my personal worth from the perspective of service using my yet clumsy and poorly developed charisms.

Yes I need to still study so I can have some perspective on where to travel, what to look forward and how to process the experiences I encounter to support my comfort with the death of self and the new life which will follow in the cloud of unknowing where the only thing I know is the presence and love of God.

18. All God wants of you is a peaceful heart.

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.” ~ Meister Eckhart
Gee, that sounds easy enough. Just be peaceful. We don't have to be good, smart, giving, holy,  or even willing to do the dishes without being reminded or asked.

I can do that. All I have to do chill.

The trouble is that if I think about this for a second I can just about hear and decent spiritual director spitting and sputtering in surprise I could be so off the mark. There just might be a little involved than what we see at first.

This peace is not just about being calm because calmness is really the result of the effort to seek the peace of Christ and not just existing in a place of calm. A peaceful heart is one what has engaged in a relentless search for the creator. When we reach the point in that search where we begin to understand what we can embrace in this life, we can simply relax and learn to trust in God, really trust in him. That means to we choose to trust and not just try to ignore the issues of life bubbling all around us. We are not to turn a so called blind eye toward troubles and concerns but keep them in full view and choose to be a peace.

This is not easy and it is not the first choice our egos would have us make because our nature to is to act, to control or to fix things that may beyond our ability to impact. I cannot make important decisions for my children. I can't will my mother to full health. I cannot fix my wife's work place woes. I can choose to let the will of God be expressed and to be open to what his will for might be in any given situation.

So why is God so insistent we have a peaceful heart? After all if he is all-powerful, why does he need us be a certain why? The answer is based in our basic freedom of choice, our gift of free will. Just like it is easier for us to ride a horse that is calm rather than one that is out of control, it is easier for God to influence our lives. More accurately, we have to elect to be willing to embrace his plan and to be willing requires us to be at peace with letting God be in charge.



Once we find peace, all other things become possible in him.

17. The most significant person is precisely the one sitting across from you right now.

The most important hour is always the present. The most significant person is precisely the one sitting across from you right now. The most necessary work is always love.” ~ Meister Eckhart
Talk about another principle for good living. Here are three inalienable statements of fact. Now is always the most important time. As discussed in earlier days, now is the time we can influence. We are taught what to do – turn toward God, seek God, be with God, honor God, do as God would have do. The last hour is too late and the next hour is not here yet and the barriers that could rise up between now and then are uncountable and unpredictable. Choose now, just as I chose this instant to reflect on Eckhart in the hopes he would lead me to seek God.

The most significant person is the one sitting across from you now. Most of the time that would be my wife. That is how it should be. She is the most important person in life. No one else is close. My children are of vital importance and from them importance radiates out to the rest of my family and from there to my friends.

That is not what Eckhart is referring to, however, the most important person over all is not the most important person at any given moment. When I am with a friend who is pain, the person is deserving and entitled to everything I have to offer. The same is true of any patient I call on as a chaplain or family member who has my attention. Each person is a creation of God and is just beautiful and worthy as I am. I should expect the same focus and attention in return and often I feel little jealous if I don’t get it. That is another question to be discussed another time. The question to focus on now is the person across from me. After all, doesn’t God offer us his love in the same fashion? There is no way to even begin to question how God can do that but, after all, he is God and that is what God is all about.

The most important work is Love. Yup. No doubt that is the truest of statements. Our pursuit of God, everything we have considered thus far in our 17 days of reflection points to that fact. It is all about love. Always.

I make a point of telling men and women I love them simply because I wish to love as God loves. There is no issue beyond the love God has for us that brought him to offer us his son, the love he asks of us and the greatest commandment he has given us. We are to love one another as love ourselves. The most important work is love.

16. Life lives without asking why it is itself living.

“If anyone went on for a thousand years asking of life: ‘Why are you living?’ life, if it could answer, would only say, ‘I live so that I may live.’ That is because life lives out of its own ground and springs from its own source, and so it lives without asking why it is itself living.” ~ Meister Eckhart

This is a mindblower. I struggle to link this to what I have come to understand about Eckhart. I have little to offer. Life lives because of God who created and creates lives. Once brought forth, life lives and lives and lives on and on and will continue to exist until God were to choose either. Given the covenant he has promised us, this can’t happen. What will happen is life will evolve from what we understand now and become something we can’t foresee even in the smallest measures.

The issue is not that live continues of its own initiative but is rather who life exists for, God.

15. Let God be God in you.

““God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself in so far as you are a created being made and let God be God in you.” ~ Meister Eckhart

God created each of us and each of us are created to be different from one another. There is no reason to try to be something or someone other than who we are, we must be authentic because that is the true beauty of creation. We are each unique and there is beauty in our uniqueness.

Psalm 139 comes up again. We are wonderfully made. We are called to rejoice in that fact and let the fact rule our lives. If we let God be God in us, we will reflect the wonderfulness of his world. The first step any of us can make is to celebrate creation and celebrate our own creation while remaining totally aware of our need to find humility and in our humility give him all due credit for the beauty which we adore.

We are created by God to know and give love. That is how we let God be God within us.

14. The outward work will never be puny if the inward work is great.

“The outward work will never be puny if the inward work is great.” ~ Meister Eckhart

This is a puzzling thought. As one who has been accused of over-thinking matters, there is a clear inference, actually bold declaration I can delay action by considering things excessively which leads to complication rather than simplification. Here there would seem to be emphasis on the consideration and contemplation phase beyond what we are commonly taught.

As I consider the statement, the quality and type of work is far more important than the amount of work. If our inward work is directed toward minimization of ourselves, our egos, our desires and wants, we create more room for God to work in our lives. We if focus on God and discerning and carrying out God’s will rather than our own, our results will reflect that effort. Great works are those works which reflect the carrying out of God’s will.

This is part of the consistent story Eckhart tells us over and over again, the lesson we first heard in the New Testament from John the Baptist. He said he (John) must decrease so that Jesus could increase. We also must decrease so that Jesus can increase in us and the great the increase in us will make the works we do greater if they give glory to God.

As said by Terentius Afer in the 1483 book, Vulgaria Terentii, and was worded in the language of the day as: “It is easyer to saye than to do.”