Finding Our True Home and Healing Sanctuary

Finding Our True Home and Healing Sanctuary in Christ

"Come to me, all you who are heavy burdened and I will give you rest….Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.; for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls."  Matt. 11:28

Our invitation from Yeshua is to find our home, our root, our rest in Him.  All of us at some time in this world of impermanence ask the question, "Where is our true home?" In my own story early in my life we had to move often as a consequence of great financial insecurity. My mother says that I often asked as young child, "Is that where we are going to live?" This same insecurity carried into adult life. I have longed to find the home and sanctuary where I can always rest, where I can always belong, where I can always have worth and dignity, where I can always have safety and security, where I can we always know who I truly am and live that truth.  For me the answer to these questions is at the core of the Christian mystery. The Heart of Christ is an ontological reality already within us. The Heart of Christ is a truth to be discovered and lived. His Invitation is to live our lives consciously and intentionally in his Heart.  In the Gospel of John He says "Abide in my love."  I take Him at His word that His heart is my home, and I can dwell there in a sanctuary that is neither conditional nor temporary. So much of the way we live is conditional, dependent on external circumstances for getting along or making a living. We make the necessary adjustments and negotiations in order to survive, in order to have some semblance of safety and security in this life, in order to be acceptable. That set of arrangements is necessary. The problem arises when we believe the set of arrangements and adjustments we make and the face we show to the world that we call "self" is who we are, is our true abode. We are wandering pilgrims in this life without a home until we discover and anchor our lives in the Heart of Christ.

Yeshua tells us that union in Him is the promise of the Way of the Heart.  (John 14:20) "On that Day you will know that I am in my Father and my Father in me, and you in me and I in you.”  Today, each day, can be “that day.” Christ is the central Reality of our inner Life. Unitive Life in Christ is an ontological truth which we are invited to live, to make real in our humanity.  In John 15:5, Yeshua says, “I am the vine you are the branches.” In this passage we see that the fullness of Christ, the Pleroma of the Word made Flesh, has the potential to be realized in our human person. This is not another human arrangement, another negotiated relationship, another "deal" we work out for our benefit. It is simply the way things are; it is not earned but pure gift. The heart of our own heart is the Heart of Christ, waiting to be fully incarnate in our human person, Christ consciousness brought forth in our own human consciousness as we spoke of in Chapter Four.

John 1:1- "In the beginning was the Word.. all things came into being through Him... What has come into being is Life and the Life is the Light of all people. " In this passage the Gospel says again that the ontological truth of our being is that we come into life in Christ and whether we are awakened to it or not, He is our true Light.  Thomas Kelly, in his beautify essay, "The Light Within" says that our inner Light is Christ. And in the Way of the Heart we come to express His Light, not in spite of, but through all of our wounds and brokenness, through the raw material of our incarnate humanity. We become the vessel and the lit flame of the Light of Christ. In this way we bring the totality of our life experiences, need, and vulnerability to the Divine Christos, the Life of our Heart, and in the love of Christ it is redeemed and brought to the fullness of life's true purpose.

In our interior life of communion with Christ He draws all things unto Himself. Life experienced in our humanity is brought into the Light and Redemptive Love of Christ, and transformed. Our humanity is not to be rejected or disdained or shamed, but brought to the altar as the broken bread to be lifted up and consecrated. What was knotted is set free, what was twisted is made straight, what was injured is healed. All is redeemed, and brought to its rightful purpose in the Heart of Christ. We experience then in our transformative spiritual practice, an interior circulation, an alchemy of Love, where all is brought to its rightful purpose in the Heart of Christ.  What was seen before as deficit becomes strength. So many persons have discovered that what brought them down and injured them and others in life becomes redeemed strength. In the moment when we say 'yes' to Christ, and make of our humanity an offering, it becomes the moment of transformation. We bow and we offer ceaselessly.

Christ Our Safety and Security

In my own early life there was great insecurity and a life of being moved from place to place and at times periods of homelessness. And it is this wound of insecurity that has been the engine of my own spiritual journey to find a Home where I wouldn't have to leave, where I would always be welcome, where I would eternally belong. All of us need a place of ultimate safety and healing to abide and take refuge.  Yeshua says that His Heart is our true home. And I believe Him. When we stop relying on the conditional survival adjustments and arrangements as the source of our ultimate Faith, and instead anchor our life ultimately in the unconditioned Love of Christ, then we begin to experience true Home, and true Peace and true Love. We can continue to live in the conditional world but we can stop making compromises with the primacy of the Love of Christ and the truth of our communion in Him. When we do this we find the courage to bring forth what is truest and best in us as gift to the world.

The purpose of a silent immersion retreat in Prayer of the Heart is to settle in to a deep place of interior safety and sanctuary in Christ. In this place of safety, in this sanctuary in our own heart, we become accessible to communion with Christ.  We open and release the knotted and wounded aspects of our life. Intensive experience with Prayer of the Heart practice opens us and makes us accessible to the Heart and Love of Christ in a deeper way than we thought possible. In the Prayer of the Heart intensive retreat we come to release from the worries, wounds, and confusion of our life to abide and heal in the Heart of Christ.

What is abiding? One way to see this might be as "anchoring" in both our attention and intention in the core and ground of Ultimate Reality, rather than being carried along in the confusion and distraction of what is "normal" consciousness for most people.   Abiding in Christ is also "anchoring" in our practice. In order to be accessible to this "anchoring" in Christ as our true home and reality we do our praxis of Breathing Yeshua, bowing in presence and adoration, and offering in love to Christ. In the Way of the Heart this grounding and anchoring happens through the "Invocation of the Holy Name," to come Home, again and again. For Christians the name of the Holy One is Yeshua, the face of God turned towards us. The ancients of the desert called this continual return the praxis of the "Remembrance" of God.

The need for salvation arises from our homelessness, and our wandering and seeking in all the wrong places. The practice is to look for love in the right place, and home is right here, right now, within us. The Good News is that God in Christ is accessible to us, The only impediment to our always being Home in communion with Christ is our receptivity, our being accessible. As God is pure gift then the real issue is being accessible. "I am here, I am ready for You, to receive You, to 'live' Your Life in mine." To be accessible we offer all that we are, all that we have lived, all that we intend and will to be, in the praxis of attention/adoration and intention/self-giving love.

We make our self-offering without exception, without shame, without self-judgement, and in utter trust. The Gospel stories teach us metaphorically that being accessible to Yeshua involves stretching and reaching beyond the familiar patterns and known limits. Healing in the Gospel stories must involve stretching out the hand in trust, asking to be being "lowered through the roof" in utter humility. And we reach out like the hemorrhaging woman to touch the garment.

These acts of Faith, and not magic, Yeshua tells us, are what makes the healing possible. And so it is in Faith we are accessible to Him and His touch within us. In a retreat space or in the consecrated space of our daily practice we enter into an act of giveness and trust where unconditioned Life is offered to us. We make ourselves accessible by stepping out of known and familiar patterns of the mind traffic and the arrangements it has made, to anchor into the Mystery of communion in Christ in our own Heart. Like the paralytic lowered through the roof to be healed, we lower ourselves into intimacy with Christ in our own hearts in the interior quiet of Breathing Yeshua, and we receive the touch of healing Love. In His touch we find our home, in His touch we find our healing.

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In this exercise of pure Faith we open to transformative healing, and our life's salvation in Christ. The healing of fear brings forth courageous Love. The healing of shame and unworthiness brings forth the dignity and reverence of Love. The healing of isolation and rejection brings forth the communion and belonging of Love. The healing of spiritual blindness brings forth the clarity and awakening of Love. The healing of a divided life brings forth wholehearted and consecrated Love.

My Healed Journey with Dad

The journey I have walked with my father the last 20 years has been blessed by this same healing touch of Christ. My father and I started out badly in life. He returned from World War II a deeply damaged young man who had undergone the worst of combat and the turmoil of an alcoholic upbringing. Being terribly injured by a drunk driver and in a hospital for several months didn't help in his prognosis for having a happy family life. My mother and father divorced when I was two years old. The father I knew growing up was not someone I wanted to be with.  Through grace, religious Faith, and Alcoholics Anonymous he began to do the inner work necessary to be a man capable of love. With the inner work I was doing in contemplative prayer practice we found a way to walk together and discover the love we could have as father and son in later life. In April 2004 I was at his bedside and he passed from this life into the joy of Christ. He had told me that his greatest happiness would be to see Yeshua face to face. I was graced to be present when that moment happened and I felt his joy.

Our journey of healing began when we decided to have an annual retreat together at the Trappist Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Oregon. It was the monastery where my spiritual mentor, Abbot Bernard McVeigh O.C.S.O. resided. In the years that followed my father and I grew to become best friends and shared the love that two men who are good friends can have. This love and healing only became possible out of the growing experience of abiding in Christ and bringing our wounds to the Love that heals all and redeems all. Sometimes an entire redemptive movement of Christ's healing touch in a life can be best summed up in a moment. I wrote a poem in 1994 to describe such a  moment.

Walking down Abbey Road

by William Ryan

Two men tread the silence and communion along Abbey Road.

Their vapored breath rises toward a grey winter sky.

This way they come now eight years,

when the sun slants just so.

They have held and heard,

each the other moan,

and lanced the  festering wounds of grief.

One foot bathes in wellspring of Living Water within,

the other wrenches in pain.

One father crying out for the son he lost in divorce,

the other, the boy he lost in the wasting of leukemia.

It will never be.

The one man injured his mind,

lost his innocence,

and his soul was bloodied,

in the killing of Bloody Nose ridge,

on that  distant Palau island, Pelilu.

Alcoholism took the rest, almost.

The other, now grey too,  recovers from wounds,

a casualty of the suicides,

broken lives and suffering of

the psychiatric trenches.

Father and son no more,

Now two old friends,

telling tales of love and passion,

round the corner and ascend the hill

of Guadalupe.

They stride arm over shoulder.

The winter ray strikes through the clouds

the outstretched white marble arms

of  welcoming Savior.

He beckons all, takes all unto Himself.

The Living Spring breaks through the weary crust,

In timelessnes, can it be any other way?

" All will be well, All be well,

And all manner of things will be well."

Healing in the Heart of Christ

Healing in the Heart of Christ

"O Christ, you are united to every being without exception. Still

more, risen from the dead, you come to heal the secret wound of our

soul. And for each of us there opens the gates of an infinite goodness

of heart. Through such love, little by little our soul is changed."

( Brother Roger of Taize, No Greater Love)

Healer of our Soul

In the previous chapter we focused on Prayer of the Heart as the way we come to find an interior space of sanctuary to heal in Christ. We must not equate spiritual healing with psychological or physical healing. To heal spiritually is to heal the soul. Here it is important to distinguish between "soul" and the true "spirit" within us. Many of the mystics will speak of the spirit as that which remains hidden in Christ, ever whole and untouched by sin and the conditioning of human life and society. The true spirit is our true Heart, the center of our being, the sanctuary of Christ's Heart within us, and dwelling place of the Trinity. The true spirit is the Imago Dei within us and source of our ontological union with God. The soul is the spiritual consciousness of the human being. The soul is the fruit and creation of our passage in this life and the medium where we do our inner work of transformation.  Spiritual practice is soul making and soul transforming. While the spirit remains ever whole, the soul is subject to the injuries of life and the deadening of moral blindness if we turn away from the Beloved's voice within us. Such moral and spiritual death leaves a soul bound in separateness and locked in a dungeon of self-absorption, inaccessible to communion with the Divine. The soul, transformed and infused with the love of Christ, is the gift we make to God in the life's spiritual journey. The true spirit already rests in its belonging in God. Our spiritual work in this life is to bring forth a soul that is transparent, shining, and aflame with the Light of Christ, in harmony with the true spirit.

In the inner work of Prayer of the Heart we bring the wounds and dark spaces of our soul to the healing touch of Christ. We open every dark corner of the soul to the Light and Love of Christ to be offered to His limitless Love. Some wounds we bear impede us from this profound act of trust. Among them are fear, rejection, and shame. A little child will not trust a doctor or nurse to touch an injured area if they are afraid. Persons will not allow themselves to be seen unclothed or speak their secret hurts if they are ashamed or expect rejection or negative judgement.  We must be willing to be naked to fully receive the unconditional love of Christ in our communion with Him and thus be healed. We will not bring the wounds of our soul for healing if we wish to look away, or if we are convinced we can heal them by other means. Such is the impact of spiritual blindness and a divided life. If we remain isolated and hidden from the Love of Christ, neither can we become transparent before Him in our willingness to offer our souls to be healed in His Heart.

But the central wound of our soul and source of every spiritual ill is the wound of separateness. For Christians Christ is the healing balm for this injury, freeing us to live our human life fully united with His Life in every moment of life.

In the silent communion of our Prayer of the Heart practice and in the midst of daily life we lift up in offering each moment, in each breath, in each invocation to Yeshua, our wounds as they appear and are revealed. We offer them to the One whose Love encompasses all and brings all to Resurrection in Him. The wounds of our soul become transformed into spiritual strength in the Heart of Christ.

Healing from Fear

Healing from Fear

"A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up saying, 'Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?' He woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!' Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, ' Why are you afraid? Have you still no Faith?' " Mark 4:35-41

In this passage from the Gospel of Mark we have a central story of fear and Faith, danger and safety. In this story as the followers of Yeshua believe they are on the verge of annihilation, Yeshua awakens in the middle of the storm. They voice their fear and their dismay by saying, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" How often has that been our own complaint! We are in the middle of crisis and disaster and sometimes even in anger question God's concern for us. In this story the relaxed Yeshua calms the storm and says,  "Peace, be still!" He then challenges his friends by saying, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no Faith?" I should say when I have heard this Gospel passage my own response has been, "Well, that's fine for you to say! You're Jesus and I'm just explosed and on the receiving end of whatever life brings me."  The question I ponder here is what it is to be vulnerable in life and at the same time to live from a place of profound interior peace and courage.

Each of us carries within us amazing levels of dread. And as we grow in our practice we may gain some awareness of how deep the fear runs in us.  Sometimes our immature Faith among Christians can be based on a misplaced idea of insurance. We may unconsciously "cut a deal" with God that if we can just be "right" with Him, then the misfortunes that befall other people won't happen to us. We see people emerge from a life-threatening situation and they piously proclaim that their Faith saved them, that they were saved from death or injury by God because of their religious Faith. Nothing could be further from the truth. That belief is magical thinking and not religious Faith. The practice of authentic Faith helps us be **with** the tragedies and traumas of real life, it does not protect us from them. Faith helps us to recover and to find a well of peace and security when losses befall us.

Live in the World-Abide in Christ

When we sit down in our silent practice of communion with Christ, we breathe Yeshua. We observe first hand the onslaught of mental obsession that leads to behavioral compulsions to "save" us from harm's way. The ego-mind develops such habits to try to guarantee us a false sense of control. And we believe if we have just the right strategy, we can have control over events in my life. These whirlwinds of obsession are like the storm in our practice of interior silence. They only are stilled at Yeshua's hand and His healing touch to connect us with real interior safety, not a false escape from life's problems and traumas. For neither Yeshua nor his followers escaped the afflictions and tragedies of life. Rather His promise to us is not that we will not escape from the pain and misfortune of life, but we will find refuge in His peace and His unfailing love in the middle of all that afflicts us. Yeshua says to us in the Gospels that we can live in the depths of life in such a way that we have a foot in both worlds, the realm of impermanence and vulnerability, and in the realm of peace and ultimate safety in Him.

When I speak of dread I have to remember my own dread as a parent that one of my children might die. This is a fear that came true for me as I had to face the loss of my young son from Leukemia. I experienced at that time the paradox of the beatitudes, that when we grieve, when we accept our vulnerability in Faith, is the moment when we can have a foot in both worlds, the world of human fragility and the Kingdom of God, and that there is no separation. To experience both simultaneously is not a contradiction, but it is where our Prayer of the Heart practice takes us. We can breathe Yeshua, be anchored in the Heart of Christ, while still experiencing the fullness of the human journey in both joy and sorrow.

Acceptance of Vulnerability- the Path to Healing and Compassion

Yeshua does not deny the reality that the human journey is filled with attachment, risk, and loss. He warns us the rain falls equally on the just and unjust. To lead the loving life is to accept it, and be with it with inner peace and security.   In the Christian path we understand that this peace and security arises from our communion with Christ. And like Sr. Antoinette, the Benedictine Amma, we may realize there is not much in life over which we have control, but we can always "sit and breathe Yeshua," be grounded in Him and therefore be present with every human experience the best way we can, in the most loving way we can. Brother Roger of Taize says of our "Yes" to Christ. "This "Yes," leaves you exposed, there is no other way.” ( Brother Roger, p. 46)

There are many fears we carry in life, existential, spiritual, and psychological.  I have worked for 34 years as clinical counselor. Much of my work has involved helping people manage or cope with psychological fears. As long as we are human we will have psychological fear, and there may be times when we are overcome with them.  Our vulnerabilities do not go away. We are called in the spiritual life to find our ultimate security and safety where it can be found but not escape the human state. In my early life the range of financial, physical, and emotional insecurities which affected me so deeply, later in life were the fuel of my spiritual seeking for a true source of security.

It is important to distinguish in our discussion the differences between those fears that are natural attributes of our humanity and therefore assist in our survival, and those fears that impede our spiritual growth. We have a natural fight-or-flight reaction in response a perceived threat to our survival or that of our loved ones. Natural fears can be activating and helpful. These fears exist on the psycho-physical level. Fears of physical death are natural and help us stay alive. Fears of violence help us to mobilize our resources to stay safe. Fears of physical pain help us to seek medical help or take care of our bodies and not take undue risks. Fears of social rejection and humiliation may help us avoid undue psychological risks. And I have seen in my professional work how often old age and disability trigger a natural fear of dependence on others. And as we reflect about fear on the spiritual level we must confront our fears of annihilation and abandonment. To be consumed in the grip of these fears is to be paralyzed in our capacity to open and surrender to the One Life that enfolds and sustains our life.

We can learn to find peace and acceptance with our mortality and the impermanent nature of human life. We can open to a deeper Life in Christ where we can always rest and find our safety. In the Way of the Heart we can find our ultimate love and acceptance and never fear that we are alone, separate, or abandoned in this universe. When we breathe Yeshua in this sanctuary in the Heart of Christ, these fears subside and heal, and we find the place of our abiding.

Our culture does not help us with these fears. Rather it seeks to avoid or distract us from facing them. Death is a taboo subject. Yet confronting our fears of non-being will lead us to seek for the connection with the Source of Being. The poor, the vulnerable, the dependent, are seen as unworthy and a burden to those who see themselves as self-sufficient. Yet our compassionate connection to the vulnerability in our selves and others opens us to love all beings more deeply. Too often we may be overcome by fear, but spiritual practice is not an antidote to ward off the range of fears humans are heir too. Yet human fragility and vulnerability and the fears that arise from them can be the doorway to finding true healing and safety in the touch and love of our practice of communion with Christ.

Rooted in Christ

The Prayer of the Heart does not take away our vulnerablity. Rather it roots us in an acceptance of our vulnerablity and the healing of our fears in a way that we open to love instead of "circling the wagons" in self-absorption. The praxis of Breathing Yeshua roots us, moment to moment, in our communion in the Heart of Christ. A question we can always ask ourselves as fears arise in the middle of life? Am I taking refuge or seeking safety in a relationship, in an attachment to a situation, a person, an outcome, a circumstance, a role, an identity, a habit pattern, that cannot truly give to me the ultimate peace and security that every human being needs?

In the Christian journey being rooted in Christ is the sole source of the "peace that surpasses all understanding." Refuge in Christ, a continual return, is a praxis, an actualization of our ontological belonging in Him.  In His Heart we find the only relief from our preoccupation with control, and release from the mind and its obsessions and compulsions.

Being rooted in Christ we learn to be fully present in the circumstances, persons, relationships, tragedies, joys, and all outcomes and experiences with the equanimity and love only oneness in Christ can give. This makes possible a kind of living I would never have thought possible. Each circumstance, each relationship, is a gift, a means to open us more deeply to this deeper Refuge. We can return to our grounding in Christ with our prayer of consecration at intervals of the day, and the ceaseless return to our prayer word in Breathing Yeshua. The ego-mind wants to create other refuges, and will easily bring us back into the habit patterns of worrying. Yeshua keeps telling us in the Gospels, "Don’t' worry!"  And He reminds us it won't get us anywhere anyway. The obsession of worry won't deliver the power and control over external things our ego-mind seeks.

In our practice each day we come to realize that Christ is our Beloved, the true spouse, companion, and friend who never abandons us.  In the practice of Refuge in His Heart, we come to fulfill the purpose for His coming into the world that He promised in

John 10:10,  “ I came that you might share in My Life, and share in It fully.” His Life is limitless, Divine Life, the Life of Love, the Life that births and sustains the Universe, Life that cannot be taken from us, Life that is indestructible and transcends all fear.

For me the question from my earliest life has always been "Where is my true Home?" I know now that Yeshua is my true Home.

Healing from Shame and Unworthiness

Healing from Shame and Unworthiness

"One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and took his place at the table. And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee's house brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself if this man were a prophet he would have known what kind of woman this is who is touching him-that she is a sinner. Jesus spoke up…" Luke 7:36-40)

The central wound of our soul, our spiritual consciousness, is the illusion that we are separate, cut off from God. Separateness is the central knot of our spiritual suffering and while it may manifest in a unique form in each of us, it is the unraveling of this knot that is the dynamic of the life’s spiritual journey. The illusion of separateness is the only original sin. All the other spiritual wounds we carry are some aspect or manifestation of separateness. And we offer and bring them all into healing through our practice of deepening communion with Christ. Christ came to heal that wound. And He comes into our life to heal that wound in each of us.

Shame and unworthiness are part of the weave of the knot of separateness.  The Gospel story of Luke here speaks to this fabric and how we break free from both the internal and external aspects of this injurious bondage. In this story in Luke' s Gospel a woman reputed to be of loose sexual morals approaches Yeshua in the house of a respected man and anoints Him with oil. She ministers to Yeshua by washing and wiping his feet with her tears and hair. The woman is condemned by the men in the house, and Yeshua is condemned for permitting her presence and touch. (An important footnote here is that the object of shame here is a woman. It is noteworthy that one doesn't see the men with whom this woman has presumably slept, so often the case throughout history.) Those with power decide who is to be shamed and who are not. In the story Yeshua turns the criticism back to the men of power and high state and points to the real source of dignity and worth in us, our power to choose loving kindness in serving others. In this story and many others in the Gospels Yeshua confronted the powerful of his time on this point, and paid for it with his life.

Every reading of this story brings me to a deeper respect for this woman. She has pointed the way to healing and freedom for all of us. Her only difference from us is that she has been "caught" or publicly reviled. She has been willing to look and to see how her misdirected needs have been injurious. She has brought her real need to the One in whom she can find completion. In her act of adoration of His Presence and her act of self-giving love in service to him she finds the path to redemption and resurrection. The shaming and judgements of others no longer matter. Would that all of us could find such healing release from the darkness of our shame and awaken to such joy in our life! In Christ she has uncovered a worth and dignity that was never lost.

Christ the Source of Our Dignity and Worth

All of us are that woman. All of us sin. We sin when we "miss the target,' when we misdirect our true needs and desires. Shame and unworthiness is a mistaken judgement against our person, based on the illusion of separateness. We have worth and dignity from our nature as children of God. We are the offspring of the Most High. We partake in the divine nature. Our worthiness is established from our very being (spirit ) in God.  Our consciousness and behavior are what is in question. It is a mistake to confuse who we are with what we do.  “You are flawed, you are broken, you are rejected, you are unacceptable, you are unlovable;" rather than, "What you did was injurious or destructive." Shame is a method of control, which works by withdrawing love and respect to exact control in the family or in the community. Shame as method of parenting or social control, reinforces the spiritual wound of unworthiness and separateness. The effect of shaming on the soul is that we are led to hide our brokenness, to hide our sins. We heal spiritually when we bring our sins and dark places to conscious examination and insight, to open to healing grace through contrition and conversion, and thereby bring them to the Light of the mercy and love of Christ. In the darkness and the hidden places of the soul festering wounds and sickness remain unhealed because of shame and unworthiness.

If the human race were serious about true change we would eliminate child abuse and especially the abusive words of shaming and unworthiness that parents use on children. Hidden sins and hidden wrongs are with us all. In shame based secrecy families are filled with them: “Don’t tell about this," or  "You don’t want people to know.” How often the crime of child abuse, battering, and sexual abuse is hidden under the injunction of shame and the fear of being seen and judged by others.

Healing Our Dark Places

Moral salvation is the re-ordering of our instinctual and mental life around the spiritual center of the heart and therefore the Heart of Christ. Yeshua says that unitive Love is the moral foundation of all human life. If our instinctual life, sexuality, and otherwise is hidden in shame, then there is no possibility of the integration of human sexuality or other aspects of our humanity into the moral realm of the Heart of Love. The transformative journey in Prayer of the Heart is the uncovering of the dark broken places in our soul, in our consciousness, that desperately need the Light of Christ and the healing of His Love. When we are in the grip of shame, we hide these places and are afraid to trust them to His merciful touch. The great failings we see in religious people, well-intentioned people around us, in religious communities, in family life, in public life often occur in secret. When the hidden places in the soul go unhealed and unconverted, these inclinations reach up and "bite" us.  They are acted out, and result in injurious/sinful and addictive patterns of behavior. Such behaviors result when well intentioned people try to create a idealized persona deserving of social approval, while being unwilling to look into the darkness of their own soul.  To be willing to uncover and reveal our dark places, and to lift them up in humble acceptance, surrendering them fully in love to the Heart of Christ is the real inner work to be done. Too few religious people are willing to do it. The woman who sits at the feet of Yeshua in communion with him in utter trust and receptivity, is a model and inspiration for all of us.

God's Self-Giving Love is Not Earned

In contrast with the values of our culture the Gospel teaches the primacy of unconditional love and mercy. In our culture we decide who is worthy and unworthy based on wealth and class.  Poverty has always been a sin, especially in our current national culture. We hear too often from the pulpit and talk-radio that the poor are poor because of moral degradation. We hear that the blessings and comforts of life are earned by our "rightness" with God according to the theologies of abundance. Even though the society we live in has adopted a theology where the rich are blessed and the poor are cursed, it is not so in the Gospel. And it is not so in our spiritual life. The parables of the prodigal child and the laborers in the vineyard, reveal to us that God's Self-Giving is not earned, it is pure gift. We must simply be willing, receptive, and open to receive His Gift of Self. In Yeshua we know God's gift of Self. In Yeshua we are "oned" in God. In Yeshua we live the Risen Life of Love.

Life is developmental learning; without mistakes we don’t learn. Without self-examination we do not learn from the consequences of our errors and grow and become transformed. It is in crisis that we open and receive the grace of contrition, tears, and conversion. We don’t allow communion with Christ if our consciousness is ruled by shame. The woman who anoints Yeshua with the oil of her love, has broken free of shame to find communion with her Beloved.  In her liberated act she says, " I don't care, I don't care any more about the judgements of these people. I only care about giving myself in love to the One who has given Himself to me in love so deeply." Communion with Christ has healed her shame and restored her dignity and self worth. Her desire to be one with her Beloved, is also our desire. And we can pray that we should be so fully consecrated and given to the love of Christ, our Beloved.

Ceaseless Contrition and Conversion- The Road to Freedom

Ceaseless contrition and conversion is the way to freedom. The stunning reality is the Life of God rises up within us anew each moment. We can break free of past conditions, past wrongs, past injuries. Yeshua invites us with this astounding Good News to enter the limitless mercy of His Heart. His message is that it doesn't matter what we have done before. It doesn't matter what prison we are in of our own making or that the culture has made for us. All of us are free, liberated from all past conditions, to choose His love and communion in His Heart in the present moment.

In our practice of Prayer of the Heart, we can breathe Yeshua; we can give ourselves in innocence and joy to the communion of love with the One who gives us our worth and dignity. It is pure gift, already given to receive. We possess it already. In his touch we discover it again and again.

St. Symeon the New Theologian spoke of it this way.

"Where all our person, all over, every hidden part of it,

is realized in joy as Him,

and He makes us, utterly real.

and everything that is hurt, everything that seemed to us dark,

harsh, shameful, maimed, ugly, irreparably damaged, is in Him transformed.

And recognized as whole, as lovely,

and radiant in His light.”

(Mitchell, The Enlightened Heart, p.38)

Healing from the Wounds of Invalidation and Rejection

Healing from the Wounds of Invalidation and Rejection

(Mark2:23, Mark 3:1, Luke 4:16-31)

In the above Scriptural references we have three examples where Yeshua is seeking to offer his gifts to the community. In each case leaders in his Faith community, his religious tradition, not only don't understand or appreciate him, but are led to reject and even defame or kill him.

In the first example the passage from the Gospel of Mark narrates the story of how Jesus with his disciples out of hunger pick the heads of grain from a field on the Sabbath. Jesus is criticized by religious leaders for breaking the Sabbath. In response He cites the example of David taking the altar bread from the temple for himself and his men when he was hungry. He then makes a statement that is stunning for his time: "The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath… The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath." For affirming this truth Jesus receives great criticism and rejection.

In a second instance also from Mark's Gospel Jesus heals a man with a withered hand, also on the Sabbath. In this case the text notes that the Pharisees decide they must destroy Him, suggesting once again that involvement with one's Faith community can be a risky venture. For this healing act of mercy Jesus is judged a threat to the community and marked for death.

In a third passage from the Gospel of Luke we see the story of Jesus returning to preach in his home region of Galilee and his village of Nazareth. He goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath and is invited to preach. Preaching from a text of Isaiah he reads, " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor." He stuns them by saying, "Today this scripture is fulfilled" and confronts them with the continuing injustice in their own community. The narrative goes on to say that all in the synagogue were filled with rage and drove him to the brow of the hill where they might "hurl him to his death." It's clear from the story this was a "close call" for Jesus and that participation in one's Faith community is too often the path to rejection. I know of no one in ministry who has not experienced in some measure this rejection, isolation, and invalidation. The hurt of such rejection runs deep when our most cherished spiritual gifts are held in contempt by those we wish to serve.

Our True Acceptance and Validation

Among our deepest desires is the desire for validation from others. All of us want to be truly seen, understood, and appreciated for who we are. We seek this in our family of origin. We seek this in the families of our creation and choice in adult life.  We seek it in our families of Faith and work, and in the myriad roles we enact in life. And we never fully receive it.  We have a longing to share our gifts of service with those in our life, and too often both gift and the giver are not understood, nor appreciated.

Yeshua invites us to a journey of completion of our heart’s desire: “Be complete (perfect) as your Heavenly Father is complete.” (Matt. 5:48) He invites us to find that completion in Himself. Only in our journey of completion and fulfillment in communion with Christ do we find truly find our self-offering fully received. Only in this communion with Christ within we walk through the doorway to communion with Christ in community. The spiritual life is a process of integrating the inner life of the Heart with the outer life of service and activity in the marketplace and activity of human communities.

The Inner and Outer Journey

Our values, gifts, and service arise from inner life in Christ. Yet these same fruits of life in Christ are nearly always in conflict with values of the marketplace and the culture. Our church and family communities, our own attitudes, are in large part influenced by the culture and values of the societal marketplace. From the beginning of our socialization as a child we are taught to "Seek first our self interest, or the self interest of the institutions in which we participate. Life is about  'ME' and not 'WE.' "That is the pre-eminent value of our society. To express our inner life in Christ brings inevitable rejection and conflict, and in grace the formation over time of a prophetic voice. Inevitably this prophetic voice may bring risk to your person and your standing in the community. And Yeshua warns us, “A prophet in his own town is never recognized.” (Luke 4:24) Our time of being hurled over the cliff of rejection and hostility may come.  In the life of the contemplative the prophetic voice is inevitably linked our inner life in Christ. To be in communion with Christ is to be in communion with, and stand with, the poor and the powerless, and to confront the cruelty of human society. The Zen practitioner might say that is the "koan" of our life. The Christian would say that is the cross we carry, in bringing together and making one, the inner and the outer journey.

Breathing Yeshua, the practice of Prayer of the Heart, is not relegated to isolated times of silence. How we meet the world with the fullness of our practice in relationships, in activity, in service, in community is also and equally Breathing Yeshua. In the exercise of peace and justice we exercise the fruits of our practice of Breathing Yeshua in daily life. Yet too often we seek to fill the “holes” of felt incompleteness and inadequacy through relationships with others, through roles we create, and through identities and expectations we form in communities. We mistakenly look for validation and completion in these things with resultant hurt, disappointment, and grasping. Like the original followers of Christ we must find our truth and say to Him, "To whom shall we go, You alone have the words of Life?" (John 6:68) "Yeshua, you alone are our salvation, our healing, our completion."

Seek First the Kingdom

In much of our life when we seek understanding, validation, support, and appreciation from others, we receive instead rejection, misunderstanding, and at times, even abuse. The result can be a profound bitterness, hurt, and isolation. Even the best of marriages, friendships, and Faith communities will always fall short in meeting our desire and need for validation and understanding. We seek for completion too often where we can never receive it. This can bring doubt and even despair into our life of Faith. Neither are we able to give to our loved ones and relationships what they truly need and seek. God alone can satisfy the desire of our Heart.

What is the resolution for those on the Way of the Heart? My spiritual mentor Abbot Bernard McVeigh, was one of the most loving, validating, accepting, appreciating, people I have known.  Yet he was forever saying, "Don't look 'out there' for what you seek? " He reminded me often that our inner life of communion in Christ is hidden. At best we can only share the fruits of it.  In our life in Christ alone will we find the understanding, appreciation, validation, and ultimately the Love we desire and need to find completion and wholeness in life. No marriage, friendship, community, or work role will ever satisfy our deepest desire. Yeshua alone is our heart's desire.

Many of us "burn out" in our marriages. Many of those in my profession of mental health and human services " burn out." This depleted state arises so often because we come to the encounter of marriage and work with empty cups. We are not fed, we are not validated within; we are not nourished by our inner spiritual life.  Many of us may find ourselves at a stage after years of marriage disappointed or hurt or feeling betrayed because our spouse isn't giving us what we need. We can feel discouraged and empty in our work because it isn't giving us what we need. Many of those I have know in religious ministry have "burned out" and either left or remain in their roles of service empty, deprived, and betrayed.

Much of our hurt, much of our sense of being misunderstood, much of our sense of abandonment by others is related to seeking from them something they can never give us, nor can we ever give them. When we cease to try to squeeze from others what they can't give us, we are on the path to purification of the Heart, that is, directing our true and essential desire and need to our life of communion with Christ. And this will help us endure and "ride out" the inevitable injuries we will suffer in marriages, our work, and especially in the work of religious ministry where the wounds can be so grievous. Religious or Faith communities, because they are so close to what is essential in life, have great capacity to inflict injury and harm. What gets us through these injuries and storms in life is our practice of Breathing Yeshua and directing our deepest need for validation and acceptance in Him alone.  He alone knows us; He alone loves us without reservation; He alone receives us into Himself in totality.

Let Christ Be Everything

The ancients of the desert taught the answer in their praxis of purification of the Heart. The desert ammas and abbas have taught if we want to find peace and wholeness in life we must unify our desire, gather all desires for fulfillment into One Desire, and Consecrate our self to it fully. Above all, we are cautioned to stop looking for validation in places where we won’t find it. When we take our deepest need to our life in Christ, then we find we can be more present, more giving, more accepting, more appreciative of the existence of the loved ones, the work, the Faith community in our life. We encounter them with a cup that is full; we see the people and relationships in our life in their blessing, for what they are, apart from what they might or might not give us. We see Christ in them in their unique ways, and we bow in presence, in adoration of Christ before us; and we give of ourselves in love and service to Christ in them.

Others are not in this world to meet our every need. We are all here to love one another, not to seek those things Christ alone can give. The hidden life of Communion in Christ sets us free, to live a life where in the words of St. Paul, “God is All, in all.”

(1 CO 15:28) and we are free to love, and to experience life in such a way as expressed in the poetic blessings of the Celtic saints,

“Christ before us, Christ behind us, Christ under our feet, Christ over us, Christ within us, let all around us be Christ.”

Healing from Spiritual Blindness

Healing from Spiritual Blindness

One of the most vital healings that must take place in our journey of transformation is the healing of spiritual blindness. The ancient Celtic hymn, "Be Thou My Vision" is an invocation and prayer for that healing. We ask that Christ be our eyes, Christ be our vision, that we come to see life and the world through the eyes of Christ.

One way that we come to this healing is that we *ask* for healed sight. In the story of Bartimaeus  (Mark 10:46) we have an example of the healing of a physical sight, but with intimations of the opening and awakening to spiritual sight.  This story has been used as a source for the longer form of the Jesus Prayer in the Prayer of the Heart tradition. ("Jesus, son of David, have mercy.")  In the story Bartimaeus has an intuition of “seeing” and of the One who can help him "see." ” In his helplessness and Faith, he trusts the One who is greater than his own personal powers. He receives his physical sight, but we may read into the story that he has regained also his spiritual sight of the remembrance of God as the Source of life and wholeness. The awakening to the unified inner vision of Faith is the real healing and the occasion of the healing of his physical limit.

Another way we come to the healing of our spiritual sight is through life crisis. Crisis happens. In such a crisis our usual patterns are rendered helpless; we are “knocked from our high horse.” In the Acts of the Apostles there is a dramatic account of such an event in Paul’s awakening from blocked spiritual vision. (Acts 9:1) Paul has become a violent and brutal man, consumed and possessed by the demon of his arrogance and grandiose self -righteousness. He is possessed with an obsession for control to the degree he is willing to commit murder. His killing and persecution of others stems from a self-absorbed conviction and grandiosity that he alone possesses truth and no one may live, no one may be acceptable, who is not inside the circle of his pride.  Paul is brought low; his physical vision is lost entirely. His spiritual blindness is metaphorically revealed in physical blindness. But he cannot open to spiritual vision until he experiences the crisis of his helplessness, and the healing of it in surrender to Christ. He must look outside the pride of own self-creation for help and resolution.  His encounter with Christ as a lightning bolt knocking him to the ground becomes his salvation. Only then is he willing to look beyond himself and his pride for help, and the scales eventually do fall from his eyes.

Paul’s pre-conversion behavior may be a good example of what we are now seeing in our times as a symptom of the death throes of tribal ethnic religion, with the rise of militant fundamentalist and violent religious movements in nearly every continent and religion in the world, including out own. This mythic membership, tribal level of consciousness, as it is called by Ken Wilber in his books, (Anatomy of Consciousness, The Atman Project) is marked by the preoccupation of the believer with the question of who is in or out of "my particular circle," rather than the awakening to the Circle that encompasses us all.  It has been thought the violence of 9/11 was an attempt to incite global war between the Abrahamic Faiths, and to some extent it has succeeded. In the long run we shall hope it will fail and result in greater desire for communion and understanding. Yet all of us are capable of Paul's exclusion, fear, and violence. Today all of us should hear Christ calling to us, like Paul, “Why are you persecuting me?”

For us what is the awakening of spiritual vision? What are the scales on our eyes?  They are the filters of vision created by the self-made self.  To be healed we must move from a self-absorbed narcissistic vision to a unitive Christocentric awareness of Love. Our beliefs and schemes will not heal our vision. Only the experience of the healing touch of Christ in our practice will heal our vision. John Main speaks the Way of the Heart in the praxis of Christian meditation in this way: “" Meditation is returning to your own center, and finding that it is the gateway to the Center of all." (Main, The Heart of Creation, p.29) When we find oneness in the Heart of Christ, our Center, we live in the awareness of our oneness with all things. St. Gregory of Nazaianzus says it this way, "Christ exists in all things that are." (Ryan, p. 31) The healing of spiritual blindness is the awakening to Oneness in Christ. It is the means by which the filters of vision of my self, my tribe, my gender, my opinions, my church, my culture, my language, my country, and my world are dismantled. I can then open to the Mystery of Christ who embraces all, and draws all unto Himself. This is our true awakening from spiritual blindness. "The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw - and knew I saw- all things in God and God in all things." Mechtild of Madeburg (Ryan, p.31)

The mind is the source of filters to our vision; the Heart is the seat of true spiritual “seeing” or awareness. Only by learning to observe the mind and disengage from its tyranny can we really let the heart expand and open to unitive love in Prayer of the Heart. Hadewich of Antwerp (12c.) says of this release from the mind's filters: “Tighten to nothing the circle that is the world’s things. Let the naked circle expand to encompass All.”(Hirshfield, p.100) The "naked circle" is the circle of Christ in the Heart. Our vision is one of either smaller and smaller circles, or larger and larger ones, until our vision is healed and opens to the Circle of the universal Heart of Christ which encompasses All. 

Even the insight of Christians of the Mystery of Christ is always a limited one. Christ is not the exclusive property of those who call themselves Christians or of the Christian churches. Thank God for that! Christ, His Life, His love, His wisdom, communion with Him is accessible to all, regardless of what name they call Him, or under what concept His Reality is known. He is not an exclusion clause, but the Heart of the Universe, the Heart of God.

It is good to recognize the markers of our blindness, the fear, judgement, and rejection of the stranger. Our xenophobia, putting what the mind doesn't grasp outside the circle of Christ, that is our adversary with whom we struggle.  We must recognize our grasping the comfortable and familiar "isms" and ideologies. We must be vigilant in seeing the “log” in our own eyes. Those "logs" are described aptly in the psychological defense mechanisms of rationalization, repression, projection, and denial. We can cultivate the dismantling and release of these ego filters in our practice of Breathing Yeshua. In our practice of the kenosis of Christ we bow and offer ceaselessly in our moments of helplessness, in our willingness to loosen the grasping hand of control, to yield our insistence on the world being the way we think it should be. In this disposition we can find ourselves healed both in the intuitive trust of Bartimaeus and in the yielding and helpless surrender of Paul.  We can be healed to the Christ Vision of Unitive Love. A spiritual elder, mystic, and teacher of our times, Thomas Hand S.J. spoke this simple truth of the unitive vision of Christ in a contemplative talk in 1997 at Shalom Prayer Center. "The God experience is awakening to Oneness and fully accepting and living the consequences."

The world in which we live, all Creation, is translucent, filled and shining with the Glory of Christ. Because of blocked spiritual vision most of us don't see it. But we can be surprised.  We can be opened to this glory unexpectedly. My lightning moment, being knocked off my high horse, or perhaps more appropriately, cut off at the knees, was the occasion of the sickness and death of my son. At the time of his cremation with my wife and my spiritual mentor, Doug, I sat in silent meditation in the crematorium. Within me was a great struggle as waves of anger, bitterness, and despair passed through my mind. The challenge of emptying and releasing was great. At a certain point when it seemed nothing was left, a peace arose in me of calm and quiet. Looking at one another that it was time, we rose together and left the room and walked outside into the light of a September day in late morning. The morning mist was lifting. I looked around at the trees and the brown hills of late summer. For just a moment the physical world suddenly disappeared and there remained a pure Radiance shining through everything, a Life, a Presence of Fire and Love. A wordless communication spoke from this Fire, "He is my beloved child, he is forever one with me and one with you."  The Radiant Life has never left me and I have never left It.  At that moment the scales fell for me and the circle of the Light of Christ became my vision.

The monk, Thomas Merton, describes such a moment of the healing of his spiritual blindness. He had long wrestled with his sense of isolation from the world, and his desire to find a unitive vision to reconcile the life of the solitary hermit monastic with the life of compassionate concern for the world.

"In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I was theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream. … Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other." (Merton, Confessions of a Guilty Bystander )

 In this moment Merton finds the healing of his spiritual vision, where a thunderbolt on the corner of Fourth and Walnut takes him into the unitive vision of Christ, seeing the world and all beings with the Lumen Christi, Light of Christ. We can be surprised and our vision healed in the Glory of Christ, on a street corner in Louisville, or at a crematorium in Portland, Oregon.

Healing from a Divided Life

Healing from a Divided Life

“ Hear O Israel, the Lord, our God is One. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind, and with all your strength. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. This is the greatest commandment.”  (Mark 12:29)

Throughout the Gospels Yeshua challenges us to be complete, to be undivided, to be wholehearted in our life of consecration to God.  The first and primary of these is his invocation of the Jewish 'Shema'. And He affirms that to be given in love to God in entirety is the whole of the law and scriptures, including the love of neighbor. Other examples include the story of the rich young man (Matt. 19:16) who comes to Him seeking the truth of salvation. He tells the young man that he cannot hold back. He must give it all to be one with God. In the teaching of God and Mammon (Matt 6:24) Yeshua tells us we must choose between our misdirected desire for wealth and security and our true desire for God. We cannot do both, we cannot lead a divided life and still enter the Kingdom of unitive love. We cannot have God and god substitutes. We cannot worship God and idols of our construction. In the story of Martha and Mary(Luke 10:38) Yeshua admonishes Martha, not because she is serving by doing manual work, but because she is creating a duality in herself and is divided in what she is doing, and therefore envious and resentful. The "better part" that Mary has chosen is her undivided devotion, a devotional love that can be undivided in both activity and stillness.

One of the most intriguing narratives of the mystical life of communion in Christ is the story of the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well:

John 4:6- “ It was about noon…. A Samaritan woman came to draw water and Yeshua said to her, “ Give me a drink.” The Samaritan woman said to him, “ How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”.. Yeshua answered her, “ If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. The woman said to him, “Sir you have no bucket and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob who gave us the well and with his sons and flocks drank from it?’ Yeshua said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water I will give will never be thirsty. The water that I will give them will become in them a spring of water gushing up in eternal life.”

What is the point of this story? Yeshua is telling us lyrically and metaphorically, 'If you want to come to completion in me, then give yourself entirely, and stop looking around for substitutes in different sizes and shapes of "buckets."

The True Spouse and the Living Spring

Beatrice Bruteau, the contemplative writer, gives a wonderful exegesis of this encounter. (Bruteau, "Living Prayer", July-Aug. 1995) She begins by noting that in the scriptures when the scene is dramatically introduced as "high noon" and  has related  incongruities (i.e. a single woman coming to get water alone at noon, speaking with a strange man), these are a distinctive red flags that  what is coming in the narrative is not about historical record but is rather revelation of Mystery. High noon is the hour of tension when Truth is revealed. The facts of the story are stated in paradoxical fashion to set the stage for the revelation to follow. There are multi levels of meaning. A conversation about drinking water turns into a conversation about Ultimate Reality and mystical union. Buckets, wells, and springs are metaphors for the Inner life of the Divine. The Samaritan woman is "us." Like her we have undergone levels of failed or false espousal in our life. All of us have gone through the espousals of our soul or spiritual consciousness in the six levels of attachment and are seeking a liberation at last in the One who invites us Home, the One who is the Gift of God

In the course of a lifetime we espouse ourselves to what we think will bring us completion. The levels of espousal in our life are the spiritual developmental journey. Bruteau suggests this developmental process is analagous to the Eastern chakra system. Christ is both the true Spouse, the Beloved, who brings us to the final liberation, and the Font of Living Water of the “I AM” who flows freely within us poured out in eternal Self-giving Love. We can at long last give up our wandering and seeking and be Home in the life of inner Communion in Christ.

We might ask ourselves what are the false substitutes, the buckets, to which we have espoused ourselves? What must we do to be free to unite with the true Spouse? So often a seeker begins the journey asking "How can I fit a spiritual practice into my life?" As the journey progress the entirety of our life, all of our human development, physical, relational, affective, intellect, and intuition are integrated into a whole and holy offering of self in communion in Christ. This is the consecrated life. This is the real meaning of Healing or Salvation, the assimilation of our complete humanity, will and consciousness, into Christ, our True Spouse.

Our inner work then is to let Christ unite and heal our life heal of inner divisions. In doing this we must confront and free ourselves from what the Buddhist teacher, Joseph Goldstein, calls, "If Only Mind." Our mind thinks, "If only this were different, if only I had this bucket, If only I had this relationship. If only I had this role. If only these conditions were different."  Much of our life we spend in "bucket consciousness": Love is limited, God is limited, and my own devices and strategies are my refuge." The only espousal then is to the objects of desire, my god substitutes, my self-created "buckets."

By contrast our practice must take us toward Living Spring consciousness: "Love is limitless and the Source is within me. Divine Life, the Living Water of Christ, is beyond my control yet I can open and be accessible to It." Entering the practice of Christ's kenosis of self emptying and self-offering, I become an empty and receptive vessel of the Living Spring of Christ's Spirit to suffuse my humanity and pour out into the world.

To expand and deepen the life of daily practice we begin by having sacred space for our prayer practice, our space of intimate communion with the Spouse. We invoke a prayer of consecrated intention before our silent prayer and at intervals in the day. (How different our world would be if every home had this sacred space at the center!)  We return and anchor ceaselessly in our prayer word of Breathing Yeshua. If we are espousing ourselves to the Beloved, we call the Beloved by name and bring ourselves to the Beloved’s Presence. This we do in Breathing Yeshua endlessly.  And we do this in every activity of life, consecrated eating, sleeping, relating, work, all of life, in activity and rest, becomes bowing in adoration and self-offering in love. In our self-offering we learn gradually to release from self-preoccupation and to become the clear and empty vessel of the Living Water of Christ. In us He rises to offer His Life of Love into the world in kindness, service, and life of inner communion expressed and actualized in every moment.

This is the true worship of God in Spirit and Truth Yeshua foretold to the Samaritan woman. This is the Mystery of the Eucharist in Christ's gift of Self to us as the Bread of Life, and our self-offering to Christ in the transformative consecration of the elements of our humanity. In this way our life's journey in following Christ is to become Christ, the consecrated bread and wine of our humanity. In this way our life is consumated in the true espousal with Christ and we fulfill the words of the Song of Solomon: "My Beloved is mine and I am His."

"Through Christ, with Christ and In Christ..

our humanity is lifted up

and consecrated in the Beloved;

thus entering the stream of the Beloved's Life

in adoration and self giving;

we sit at the Wedding Feast of Eternal Life."

(Ryan, p.74)

Christ our Resurrection and Life

Christ our Resurrection and Life

"Wherever you are on earth, you wish to perceive the Mystery that lies at the Heart of your heart.. 'Why be afraid? I, Jesus, am here; I am the Christ. I loved you first… In you have I set my joy!

..Recognized or not, the Risen Christ remains close to every person, even those unaware of Him. He remains there in secret."

(Brother Roger of Taize, No Deeper Love)

Paschal Mystery

In the Lenten Liturgy we celebrate the Paschal Mystery of Christ. In my childhood years the only thing I understood was that Easter was a time for dressing up in fine clothes and families to take pictures. I never made the connection very well between the death and resurrection of Jesus and real life. So I've been reflecting on that every since. Yet in the Christian tradition we teach the death and resurrection of Jesus as the pivot point of Christian life. If this is only historic event, how can this be central to our own spiritual life?

I have come to understand the Paschal Mystery of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, is the mystery of *our* life and all existence. We celebrate this mystery in the spring of the year when there is the rising of new Life. In the spring the new life arises out of the death and transformation of the old life.

The rising of new life arises out of death, and the relinquishment of all that has gone before. New life is the developmental fulfillment of the life cycle. The butterfly in Easter Christianity is a potent symbol of transfiguration and resurrection. The caterpillar dies as it was before, and leaves behind the husk of its former existence so the butterfly can spread its wings and leave the bounds of earth.  The old life has to be cleared away, so that there is space and room, for the new life to emerge. The season of winter is this phase in the rhythm of the seasons, so that spring can burst forth.

For us the meaning of resurrection, the invitation to join Christ in the Risen Life is not just about the resurrection at the end of physical life or the end of time. Resurrection is the potential that awaits us here and now to live the Risen Life of Christ in our own. In the tradition of Eastern Christianity we realize the goal of human life is Christification, to bring forth and manifest the Life of the Risen One fully in our own human life, in the uniqueness of our own journey and life development. Easter and Resurrection therefore are what we live more than just what we believe.

Resurrection is not something we do alone or of ourselves. It is the something we participate in; it is the way we unite our life to the Life of Christ in the way of the Cross, in the many deaths of self relinquishment and kenosis.  We face these transformative movements most clearly in time of trial and loss. Living the Resurrection is the way we die to the former life we lived, and are given to the consecration of the Risen Life of Christ coming alive in our own life.

Gethsemane and Easter

Two visual representations of the Paschal Mystery are the icons of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane and the icon of Resurrection called Anastassis (raising up).  The first shows the self-offering and surrender of Christ, while the disciples sleep. They show all those resistances in our humanity that don't want to face the truth of the way life is in our vulnerability and impermanence. These sleeping apostles in us resist by being unawake or unconscious or distracted. The Christ of Gethsemane is a vulnerable Christ, and we are not different.   The self-offering of Christ, the kenosis of Christ, is what makes the second movement of Rising possible. And so it is also in our own practice of Breathing Yeshua each moment, releasing and offering. In our opening in the Heart and in the space of our surrender to Christ we are then joined to His Rising.  We are lifted up and out of the deadness and stagnation of our habitual patterns, as represented by the Christ figure reaching into the underworld and lifting up the figures of Adam and Eve in the Anastassis icon. The discarded keys and locks in the icon represent the unbinding of our chained and oppressed condition. Christ is the liberator who frees us from death to live His Life.

Resurrection is a life long process of living out the Paschal Mystery. Gethsemane is part of the process, Golgotha is part of the process, and Easter is the fulfillment of the process in each of our lives. Years ago in presenting a hospice workshop a pastor invited to participate made the comment: "There are too many Christians who want the Resurrection and are unwilling to accept the crucifixion." In other words we come to participate in the Risen Life of Christ through our equal participation in His crucifixion in our own life.

Yeshua poses that same question to each of us when he says, " Can you drink the cup which I am to drink?" Our invitation is to drink fully the cup of our life and death, and to allow all those experiences of joy and sorrow to be the means of our redemptive, transformative work.  (Mathew 20-21).

In the garden of Gethsemane we are presented with the vision of a Yeshua in his vulnerability. He is a human who sees the losses he faces, the pain of complete desolation, of abandonment, of aloneness, of not only the loss of his own biological life, but also the loss of the experience of union with the Source that all humans experience. In the Garden of our Gethesemane again and again our own human will cringes before the onslaughts to our vulnerability. In moments of crisis we come face to face with the physical and psychological vulnerability that is our humanity.  Like Yeshua we may say, "Let this cup pass from me" We just don't want it.  "Make it go away." The ego says, "I didn't bargain for this."  And our time of trial arises as fear and despair grips us in small or big ways. The life of Faith can take us deeper.

Yet true freedom from fear only is resolved only when we give over our vulnerability in sheer gift of love and trust.  Like Yeshua we have the capacity to loosen the fist of our hand and hold it out empty and offering our own humanity and emptiness to the Beloved. This giving, this choice, isn't one we make by ourselves It is our union with Christ that allows us to make that gift in Him. Christ chooses in us when we say, "I choose You. Let Your will be mine in this moment forward." Then we begin to move in freedom to accept that our life suffering and circumstances are the cross on which we can be fully given in love and transformed. The cross of "what gets in the way, becomes the Way." In this way we are united with the Cross of Christ in every moment, and every circumstance of life.  This is the heart of Prayer of the Heart, to be fully given in love in Christ.

Luke 9:23- "If you want to become my followers let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, those who lose their live, for my sake will save it." It is in this emptying and relinquishment of all those things that we have identified with in this life, all our ideas of success and failure that we release from our false identity; we lose our life and therein find our True Life who is Christ. We must make room, make space, and give a whole hearted  "yes" for Him to live in us.

"Unless a Grain of Wheat fall to the earth and die, it cannot bear fruit." (John 12:24) Falling is not a bad thing in the Gospel. The culture deems falling as failure. Yet falling is inevitable in life. The real question in our practice is how do we fall and what do we do when we fall. Can we learn to fall in self-relinquishment to Christ? Can we learn to keep going in our walk with Christ when we fall? Can we let our falls be the occasion of our deepening self-gift to Christ? Are we willing to take the next step in our falling?

Yeshua says: “ Be not afraid .. I am with you always.”  (Matt. 28) This is the promise that we are never alone in our journey. And it may be in our falling that we are most accessible to Yeshua, most aware of our need and His presence as our Faithful companion in this life.

Our Daily Cross

How do we take up our cross daily, when do we do this? In our practice of Prayer of the Heart both in stillness and in the middle of life we cultivate the interior movements of presence and adoration. In our adoration we bow in self-offering love to Christ who is our Life. In the ceaseless invocation of the name of Yeshua we unite our human life to the Life of the Risen One and we enter the life of Resurrection.

Our cross of human vulnerability and impermanence, our cross of separateness, are the raw material of our daily bowing in adoration and self-offering in love. All of us, without exception come through life wounded, especially in the earlier years when we are most vulnerable and least defended. Our wounds, the wounds we often deny and run away from, can be seen as the sacred wounds of Christ. We may have hidden them in shame, or in fear. The way we defend our wounds and protect ourselves from further harm may keep us from loving more deeply. Yet it is these very wounds that are the way of our salvation. If we look closely in our journey, it is the way that we have been hurt or injured in life and our search for healing and strength that become our Way into Christ. For me the early injuries of insecurity and isolation, became the fuel for my finding true sanctuary and true belonging in the Heart of Christ.

The main purpose of God's redemptive work is that we may be restored to a life of participation in His Life in Christ. Hence true redemption, true salvation, is the healing of the soul's capacity to receive and manifest the love of Christ, present within us from the beginning.

Our Sacred Wounds

Our Wounds in the Paschal Mystery are the means of our redemption and opening to the Risen Life of Christ. Think of those times in your life when you are brought closest to your wounds, to your vulnerability as a human being. They are times of crisis, when the habitual patterns don't work, when the usual supports aren't present. They are a time of trial when the temptation is to dig a hole and climb into it, or lash out in anger or self-defense and fear. This is the moment when the cross of Christ is our redemptive path. In this moment when we allow Christ to choose, and say "yes"- that we are given in love, given in trust to love more deeply, more fully, more completely. That is a Resurrection moment.  The beatitudes teach us that Resurrection happens only in our vulnerability when we really exercise Faith to take refuge in Christ. When things are going well, when the mind and psyche feel secure, we are comfortable in our habitual patterns and old husks. When things fall apart, through grace, the self of separateness can fall apart into the life of communion with Christ. Holding it together isn't always a good thing. When we fall apart into the arms of Christ, that is a good thing indeed and we break free from our husks into butterfly glory and flight.

The moment of trial, of doubt, in a relationship, in a human encounter, in helplessness can be the moment of death and resurrection. (And isn't what we fear the most helplessness?) Can I do this? Can I drink this cup? Can I give myself without reservation to the love of God in even this? That is our Garden of Gethesemane.

Think of your Cross in life, and the carrying of it, as the particular way we bring the wounds of our human soul, and the knot of separateness again and again to the healing and restoration of God. Christ is the One who carries the cross in us, the One who unravels the knots of isolation and separateness. He is the One who opens us to the choice of self offering in Him; and His love, again and again, ceaselessly opens us to Himself in the course of a life time.

Think of those choices you have made, when it was most dark, when you were most in trial, most in crisis. Think of when you were most willing to reach out with empty hands and ask for help in making the choice for what is most good, most loving, and most healing, regardless of the cost. In each moment, in the darkest moment, this is the cross of Christ which brings us to the death of the cocoon of our self absorption and into the flight of freedom to Love, as we are called to, as we were loved into existence to do.

In my marriage, in my life as a father, as a counselor to the emotionally and mentally afflicted, as a spiritual director, I have grown the most in love when I had to reach with empty hands and a sense of helplessness and inadequacy. I have opened the most when I asked for help to give of myself in love, the best I could. This is the opening to the Risen Life of Christ, coming alive in me and you. This is our death to the habit patterns and dead mental formations that keep us locked in bondage. The times of my seeming failure and helplessness, the death of my self-sufficiency and separateness, then become the opening to consecration in the Risen Christ. Brother Roger of Taize tells us about the nature of this Resurrection in Christ: " When Christ asks you, 'For you, who am I? Suppose you were to reply; 'Christ Jesus, You are the One who loves me into life that has no end.' " ( Brother Roger, p. 37)

Jesus said, " I am the Resurrection and the Life, those who believe in me, though they die, will live."( John 11:25)  The way we come to that realization is through our humanity.  Paul in his letter to the Corinthians (I CO 1:23) said that he came to proclaim neither the law of the Jews nor the wisdom of the Greeks but Christ crucified. No high minded philosophy will bring us to oneness with Christ, but only the cross of our life experience, if we let grace happen. He was talking to people about what is real, that life is tough, and you can't realize goodness by making rules or expounding lofty ideals; rather you come to love's completion through the hard things in life. M. Scott Peck said that life is a school for loving. And so it is in our relationships, they are a dimension of the cross, the school of our life, where we learn to love, fully and deeply

Stations of the Cross

One of the important devotional practices of my childhood was the stations of the cross. At some level in my earlier life they made a deep impact because I understood they are not about history, but about the mystery of living for you and me. Christ crucified is about our living and our crucifixion as well.

Jesus is condemned- We are condemned when the hurts and injustices of life, and when our losses and vulnerabilities catch up to us. Things may come our way that we think we don't deserve. Our diminishments, the works we have wrought, the relationships that have disappointed or hurt us, they condemn us as well. What we had placed our hope and security in vainly, condemns us. Impermanence and death intrude and condemn us. We are mocked and humiliated by the judgements of the culture around us and by our apparent failures.

Jesus receives and accepts the cross- We accept what life has brought us, and let it be the means of our transformation to learn to love as best we can, to learn to let Christ give Himself in us as best we can. We accept the unavoidable and let it transform us, rather than give in to blind resignation.

Jesus falls the first time, the second, and the third- We fall, we fail, we don't live up to what is best and deepest in us, Our weakness is revealed. The fall to the ground is acceptance of our humanity, our limitations. We learn a great wisdom, the acceptance, and above all, the faithfulness of getting up again and again and going on. When we fall seven times, the important thing is the eighth time we get up.

Jesus receives help- We are not self sufficient and separate, Christ carries our cross with and in us, and others walk with us on this journey of transformation in His love. We are never entirely alone or abandoned as Christ continually offers Himself as our companion.

Jesus is stripped of his garments- We are stripped and naked in our defenses before God, and our utter and complete dependence on Him. Our life arises in God, and remains ever one in God. The paradox is that in our nakedness we discover our essence in God and our ultimate security.

Jesus is Crucified-Yeshua is nailed to the cross of his death- We are nailed to the cross of our own losses, our own wounded humanity, and radical need for God

Jesus gives up His Life- We give up the life we have known in self-offering to God. The prayer of consecration of Yeshua is our prayer- "Into Your Hands, Abba, I commend my Spirit." For me this is the last chant, the last mantra of the day. And in the official office of the monastic tradition of Compline it is also the last chant of the day. It is the daily commitment that we give up the life we have known that Christ can live in us. And in our surrender the stone of our own separate-self life rolls away and the life of Christ rises to live fully in us. In that moment we are offered up, as the host in the Eucharistic liturgy, and are united in the offering of Christ.

Resurrection Life in Ordinary Life

As we deepen our practice in the Way of the Heart we come to live Resurrection in ordinary daily life. We experience not just crucifixion but the glory and joy of the Risen Life of Christ.  Our Resurrection becomes our journey of singular refuge in Christ alone.

We find extraordinary joy in the ordinary life of walking with others, it is the road to Emmaus, eating, drinking, cooking the fish for others. We find joy in breaking bread; we sail on the sea of Galilee with Yeshua in the everday lives of service. Resurrection life is sailing with Yeshua in this way, in the ordinary life of ours. True enlightenment and mystic union leads to this state, of living ordinary life with exquisite and extraordinary joy and love. Resurrection leads not to separation but joining fully the unitive life of humanity and all Creation. In us Christ can love and serve our loved ones, our community, and the created world of all things around us. It is a life of consecrated love and concern for all things. The true measure of a life then is agape, unitive love, and its measure is the tender concern we bring to all we do.

The transforming union is the birthing of Agape, self -offering love, the journey that began in exile and alienation takes us back into community. The Way of the Cross takes us to the Golgotha of our lives, and from there to the empty tomb. Resurrection takes us on the road to Emmaus where we walk with others. Resurrection takes us on to the sea of Galilee and sailing with Jesus and our brothers and sisters, back into community, back into service and finding the Christ at the center of our own heart, equally in the world and in others. It is the work of the Risen Christ, His Resurrection and Life in us, coming to fruition in our life