"What if the nub of hope is that we cannot know where it is leading?" (Dana Littlepage Smith, writing in The Friend 21 May 2020)
This morning the rain is grey and unceasing. Drops trickle down the windows, beyond the reflections of the room lights, on since we woke up, late. A chill seeps in, despite the good tight glazing, and the room's warmth. Out along the hazels, damp little blue tits flit from shelter to shelter, looking for spiders under the leaves.
"Silence is paradoxically a listening, and solitude is truly finding the whole world in God." George Maloney, Prayer of the Heart: The Contemplative Tradition of the Christian East.
"All our steps are ordered by the LORD; how then can we understand our own ways?...
The human spirit is the lamp of the LORD, searching every inmost part."
(Proverbs 20:24,27 NRSV)
It is only in the darkness of unknowing that the structures of our understanding fall away from our naked awareness, and we find that nothing separates us from the wholly unknowable ground of all that is, Eckhart's Istigkeit, love alone in which all things come to be, and are held. But it is only when we are at the very end of ourselves that this gift can be received, into open hands that can hold onto nothing anyway, that have lost all they ever had.
"...for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God." (Colossians 3:3 NRSV)
"For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?" (Romans 8:24 NRSV)
2 comments:
Mike, hello!
It's perhaps only tangentially relevant, but I recently read a line in the literature of my programme of recovery which spoke about "the courage to live with the insecurity of being human." Yes! To be at home in the liminal time, in indeterminacy, in not quite knowing where we're going (Thomas Merton's prayer from the pages of Thoughts In Solitude comes to mind). To know that I don't have all the answers. To accept, to be receptive, of those things (most things!) which I don't control.
Such as the weather! Friday was our day of grey and unrelenting rain. I was accordingly grateful for our sunny, cool Saturday.
peace and light
Thomas D
Yes, that's a good point, Thomas. When we are young, responsible parents and teachers try to focus our minds on the idea of "security" - a solid job, our own home, a place in society, life assurance! But it isn't like that. Perhaps that's why Jesus made such a point of the poor - or as Bob Dylan said, "When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose." Without security we know our dependence on God.
This morning was sunshine and showers, almost like a chilly spring, and we actually made it out for a walk. The hedges wour ere full of sparrows, who always lift my heart. A good morning!
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