You Are Mine: A Christmas Reflection

Song of Songs, Marc Chagall

Arise, my beloved, my dove,

my beautiful one, and come!

For see, the winter is past,

the rains are over and gone. . . 

Let me see you, 

let me hear your voice,

for your voice is sweet,

and you are lovely! 

—Song of Songs

For a fleeting moment this morning, I felt you, vast 
and penetrating in your love, smiling broadly 
as if all my sorrows were naught. It was not a mocking 
disregard but a humorous dissolution of all the surfacing 
irritations and disappointments, as if to say:

In my Love, all is well, all is joy, all is peace.

Had you come back to me then and stormed

my dusty manger so unfit

for one as magnificent as You? 
And yet—you loathe artifice. 
Rather you would lie here with me in the dirt, eking a smile 
out of one so determined to be sad.

(Written at New Camaldoli Hermitage,
Big Sur, 2011)

Custody of the Eyes

A journal entry written while on retreat at New Camaldoli Hermitage, Big Sur

In loving memory of Kathleen Flowers (1964 - 2009), 

whose presence still remains in our circle of writers

I came to the hermitage with the intention, the hope, the need to shed every garment and sit in naked awareness of my heart, and to notice the countless ways I permit my spirit to be tugged away from the place I love most--the place where You and I live and move and have our being.

"Contemplation," Ivan Mestrovic

      This need, this hope, to bring myself back again and again to the heart is the reason I have cast my eyes down to the ground, choosing not to look up to see who is walking toward me or standing next to me in the kitchen. At such times, I notice a need--a compulsion even--to engage the other's eyes and give a smile of acknowledgment. But even this seemingly benign, polite, courteous gesture feels burdensome to my spirit.
      I have come to see that I have spent most of my life trying to take care of others' feelings--to make sure they do not feel hurt, spurned, ignored by anything I say or do or feel. In the name of goodness and "Christian" love, I have torn my spirit away from its source and handed it over to those to whom it does not belong. When this happens--this unwitting handing over--I feel my life draining out from the center and dissipating in a thousand directions. I experience it as a rending of the most deadly kind. I lose ground. I become terrified. I topple over. I struggle to gather myself up into one still point: my heart, where my own truth dwells.
      And so I have chosen, like Kathleen, to keep custody of the eyes, and to experience the habitual, conditioned urge to look up, be nice, to take care, to control, in some measure, how the other fashions her story about me, as if that story were the truth and only she and a thousand others could tell me who I really am.
      No. This time God demands that I gather up my faculties and turn them wholly inward, so that I might know who I am in God and experience the peace and stability that come from living in that center.

Discipleship: Falling/Faltering/Following

Beloved, I long to know the depth of your life in me--

At times I feel so hopelessly apart from you--

so profoundly lost and alone, without the security

and protection of your love--

I pray to trust that you live deep inside me--

and are guiding my every step with your love.

To follow you feels so precarious--

To do otherwise feels like death--

Re-acquainting: Note to G-d

And I feel such a desire
to be with You now, away
from all that religion and all that talk--
Away from all the fuss and striving--
We are friends now, old friends--
We can sit beside each other in silence
and not feel awkward or afraid--


(Journal note, 2003)

"Accept the Inevitable Tumult and Struggle"

This prayer is by Etty Hillesum from her diaries published posthumously in a book called An Interrupted Life. I have been reading it these last couple weeks and, as a wise friend told me, it is a trustworthy roadmap for the spiritual journey. And Etty is fast becoming one of the best companions I have found along this path.

Etty Hillesum, 1914 - 1943, died at Auschwitz

God, take me by Your hand, I shall follow You dutifully, and not resist too much. I shall evade none of the tempests life has in store for me, I shall try to face it all as best I can. But now and then grant me a short respite. I shall never again assume, in my innocence, that any peace that comes my way will be eternal. I shall accept all the inevitable tumult and struggle. I delight in warmth and security, but I shall not rebel if I have to suffer cold, should You so decree. I shall follow wherever Your hand leads me and shall try not to be afraid. I shall try to spread some of my warmth, of my genuine love for others, wherever I go. But we shouldn't boast of our love for others. We cannot be sure it really exists. I don't want to be anything special, I only want to try to be true to that in me which seeks to fulfill its promise. I sometimes imagine that I long for the seclusion of a nunnery. But I know that I must seek You amongst people, out in the world.

Enduring Conversion

God, you know better what I've done here--

all the things I've laid at your altar:

the pleas and desperation--the hope

for relief--for healing--for love--

for a return to you--

May I be the seed deeply planted in your heart.

May I take root there--and grow up into You--

May you protect the fragility of this seed--

fragile yet determined to live--to burst

forth from your heart--to become

self-gift--

God, may I die enough to be that gift--

May I give and receive love--

May I conceive (of) it in new ways--

May I seek not romance but 

true intimacy with You.

Mary Magdalen: Sculpture by Bruce Wolfe

An Annunciation: To Mary

It is hard to imagine you

as my guide in the ways of love--

and yet, you are the ultimate Lover

of God. The way you opened yourself

even in the midst of your fear and lack

of understanding.

Something must have compelled you to open--

Something must have stirred your heart

Something must have roused your flesh

Something must have drawn that Yes from your lips--

Annunciation, by Ivan Mestrovic