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Solitude on Ferry Beach
Ferry Beach, Maine
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A newcomer exclaimed, after a meditation session, "I'm so happy! I've been lifted up above this world!" Replied the Sage, "Well, just be patient, you'll come back down."
The Way can lead us through a phase of feeling detached from the world. We keep going and find ourselves, later, more intimate with the world than before. Finally, transcendence becomes a relationship of depth with matter we could not have known apart from fidelity to the Way. In that sense, transcendence is going more deeply into the world of matter, not living removed from it in some spiritualized detachment. Intimacy with matter becomes everyday ritual.
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
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In Rhythms of the Heart (Ed. Shelly Chapin), Phil Hook writes ...
My mother and I did not "mix." I chose a typical teenage solution to the problem - silence. I would leave for school in the morning, come home to eat, then leave again. When I was finally home late at night, I read books. Invariably, my mother would come downstairs and ask me if I wanted a sandwich. I grunted my assent. She cooked egg and bacon sandwiches for me night after night until I left home for good. Years later, when our relationship was mended, she told me why she had made all those sandwiches. "If you would ever talk with me, it was while I made that sandwich," she said.
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As embodied beings, we need corporeal means to share love, to connect with others, and to celebrate the gift our lives are together. Matter becomes the arena for reverencing and communicating with the intangible. Yet, the intangible is not separate from the tangible. The unseen is the depth of the seen.
How do you share with others through physical means (i.e., hugs, kisses, sex, smiles, letters, words, music, food, gifts ...)? What in the world of matter do you find awakens in you a sense of the Sacred?
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*©Brian K. Wilcox, 2023.
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox and title and place of photograph.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
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