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LOTUS OF THE HEART
All is Welcome Here
Living in Love beyond Beliefs
Solitude and silence are hard to find in the modern world, which regards both as aberrations which must be avoided. Yet solitude has never been more sought after, as the growth of the retreat movement shows. Increasingly, people are experiencing an interior call to solitude which, although it was a commonplace in the Middle Ages, is strange to today's religious concerns, with their emphasis on community. The solitary, standing outside these concerns, witnesses to a God who is divinely other and not a commodity to be possessed by the world for its own ends.
The mystery of God is encountered in silence and solitude. The creative artists make raids into this unknown world of mystery, and return bearing artifacts. Others make solitude their home; these are the contemplatives.
*Eve Baker. Paths in Solitude.
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During the Ash Wednesday worship, last week, I sat, alone. I am not a Lent fan - I have had an overdose of guilt from my religious upbringing, and I no longer believe in a "God" who needs or wants a litany of self-recrimination. Not prepared, or needing, to grovel in guilt or voice a ritual of self-demotion, I just am. Why sitting there? To receive, I know not what. I need to be here, I want to be here, I was drawn to be here. Why?
Sitting, this word arises, again and again, and I feel close to the Message, living. The Message? One word. Hiddenness. This feels right, true. I reflect.
Some of us are called to Hiddenness, I see this. Solitude is receptive to be apart and among and with and One, and beyond. Solitude can play among separation, union, oneness, and beyond even oneness. Yet, Solitude is the Hiddenness within these modes of play of Being, of Life, of Spirit.
To enter more fully into fellowship with this world, an ironical and paradoxical process occurs. The more I am hidden, not in myself as a singular being, but in Grace, in the one Thou that makes us what we are together, the more I am free to be. I become more a human being, rather than a human doing. Hiddenness does not mean that I know you less, but I know you more, for I know you from within the one Thou, the Word, we are the living expression of as echoes of the Word. We express the Thou, the Christ, and we are That, not in ourselves but in Christ. That is, in Christ I am hidden that Christ may come forth to know you, to love you, and to heal you back into Wholeness, even as I am being known, loved, and healed in and by the one Thou.
This Hiddenness, for me, seems to have been the major theme of my life, even from early childhood. This has a cost, for Hiddenness, while giving great gain, means great loss. I am not giving up anything in particular for Lent. I have been given up, and at great cost, and great gain, to Love by Love. Love is Thou, and Thou is Love. I become more and more hidden, and hidden from myself. For once you have given yourself up to this Solitude, the Solitude takes on a momentum outside your conscious will and choice. I am hidden, that I may be hidden. Yet, I would not renounce this Hiddenness, or speak ill of it, only that you need not pray for It, unless you are ready to say "Yes" to the loss even of yourself, and of all common loves. Drawn by Thou to Thou, Love has been taken from me, that I may know Love. Thou is Love.
In my missing You,
I have come more to love You, my Love.
You take away my knowing of You,
that I might know You.
In not knowing You,
oh! what sweet knowing I taste,
for I taste You, not a knowing of You.
And in knowing You, I am known,
and in tasting You, sweet the taste of me.
*Move cursor over pictures for photographer and title.
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