Come, bask in the Light of Love,
all you who would serve
the Divine plan!
Lift up your hands to the Holy One,
singing songs of praise!
Bow down and receive blessing from
the Giver of Life!
All praises be to You,
whose Love created heaven
and earth!
*Nan C. Merrill. Psalms for Praying. "Psalm 134."
And the WORD became flesh and lived among us. And we looked at his Beauty, Beauty as of the only born Offspring of the One. This WORD was filled with and emanated the vibrancy of Grace and Truth.
*Gospel of John 1.14
* * *
To say the Word, or Logos, became flesh, speaks of the one-ing of opposites. We enter the Word and the Word us in awareness that we are, yet our being is for we are being in the being of everything. For the Psalmist to hymn the Divine formed heaven and earth is the same as saying, "Everything comes into time-space out of the one Divine before time-space." So, all belongs, each thing mirrors all else, as well as the Eternal Wisdom ~ everything is a mirror of every thing, every thing a mirror of everything. And Thomas Merton, late Christian mystic, echoes for us the feeling of these opposites in our body...
This sense of being suspended over nothingness and yet in life, of being a fragile thing, a flame that may blow out and yet burns brightly, adds an inexpressible sweetness to the gift of life, for one sees it entirely and purely as a gift. A gift that one must treasure in great fidelity with a pure heart.
*Thomas Merton. A Year with Thomas Merton. Ed. Jonathan Montaldo. From Journals: Dec 15, 1962.
* * *
Much of our felt alienation and loneliness ~ if not all ~ can be traced to a feeling of and belief in separation from others ~ all creation. This includes feeling separate from our own selves, exemplified in one way by our over-dependence on reason as conceptual.
The Psalmist speaks of the Creator creating both heaven and earth, and this leads to praise. So, there is both, yet one ~ both in one, and one is the harmony, not the negation of either. A feeling of separation is healed in this union, a union most of us grow into over time, a long time, provided we choose to. First, we notice times of felt-union, however brief, like Oneness burping Itself into the pattern of diversity. Then, these become more frequent, and some more extended. This, in time, becomes the sense (not feeling) from which our living arises. Possibly, outside of silence, poetry is best to point to this...
* * *
A million candles,
a single light
they share.
Every creature,
distinct, manifests
the same life.
With distinction,
no separation,
all is One.
God wears
many faces,
so are you.
Shed illusion,
look deeply,
meet Simplicity.
Simplicity arises
as multiplicity,
thus this world.
So, not one,
not two,
is true.
Crossing the river?
Nowhere to go.
"I AM Here."
God is not shy.
Why are you still
looking?
Any aspect
is the way to
the Whole.
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Million Candles, Single Light."
Grace and Peace to All
Lotus of the Heart is an interspiritual offering of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, who lives in Florida USA. Feel free to submit a query to Lotus of the Heart...
*Move cursor over pictures for creator of photo and title.
