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Last year, I admired wines. This,
I'm wandering inside the red world.
Last year, I gazed at the fire.
This year I'm burnt kabob.
Thirst drove me down to the water
where I drank the moon's reflection.
Now I am a lion staring up totally
lost in love with the thing itself.
Don't ask questions about longing.
Look in my face.
Soul drunk, body ruined, these two
sit helpless in a wrecked wagon.
Neither knows how to fix it.
And my heart, I'd say it was more
like a donkey sunk in a mudhole,
struggling and miring deeper.
But listen to me: for one moment,
quit being sad. Hear blessings
dropping their blossoms
around you. God.
—Rumi, Trans. Coleman Barks
The intention of the Divine is to captivate us, totally, and claim all of us—for we derive from that One and our Home must be in returning to that One, or rather, being returned to that One by the One—transforming us, wholly, into the full likeness of God, God’s Self, Who is Love. The Spirit, as Immediacy of Love, proceeding eternally from the Father and linking the Father and Son with Itself in Love loving, and drawing us into that most holy Mystery we call the Trinity, intends to wreck the life we have used to keep safe, supposedly, from the self-annihilation that brings, paradoxically, knowledge of the self and its freedom in union with its Source, Who as Infinity is Freedom. God loves us too much to seek to do less. God wants us as free as God is free. Therefore, do not get discouraged by the evidences of unfreedom that remain in your experience, rather give thanks for them, place them within the Mystery of the Cross, and see these evidences as opportunities to emerge into freedom, for the opposite is the opportunity, even as the Cross of Christ was the opportunity for the Resurrection of Christ. What do we have to do? Say, “Yes.” With that one word spoken, God can work miracles. Do not try to figure this out, just get out of the way. Do not try to make this happen, just allow it to happen. Do not try to surrender to this process of gracious purging, just surrender, even if you do not understand what you are surrendering to. Indeed, when we speak this “Yes,” we have no idea what we are surrendering to. As long as we have an idea, we are not ready and prepared to surrender. God will transform you from admiring the Wine to being within the Becoming of the Wine, which is nothing other than the Fullness of God. As a drop of water poured into a bottle of wine is imbued with wine and, thus, becomes the wine of its new environment, likewise, the person, all of the person, is deified by God pouring the person into God, thus, becoming with God, God, while retaining its derivation from God and as other than God. But, when one becomes the Wine, then, these distinctions lose their priority, and only Love remains to bathe the mind, body, soul, and spirit in Bliss, eternally, for this one has transcended and enfolded in oneself, through God, the distinctions of place and time. When your “I” is the “I” of God and the “I” of God your “I,” then, you shall have passed fully into participation in the Divine Nature, what our Eastern Christian mystics have called deification: you shall have become, through God, through Grace, en-god, a process, moment-by-moment, or eternally, of en-god-ing; indeed, you shall have become the Light of God, the Christ, by participation and gift, in the world.
—Brian K. Wilcox
I saw a sparrow
outside the window
My heart opening to
Her song
I spread wings
and flew
I saw the Friend
reflected in the rite
My heart opening to
the Truth
I passed through the shadow
into the Light
Some kiss the threshold
and soar into the Sky
some just step through the door
and never leave, again
Fly, my friend!
Fly!
—Brian K. Wilcox
OneLife Ministries is a pastoral outreach and nurture ministry of the First United Methodist Church, Fort Meade, FL. For Spiritual Direction, Pastoral Counseling, spiritual formation workshops, Christian meditation retreats, or more information about OneLife, write Rev. Dr. Brian K. Wilcox at briankwilcox@comcast.net.
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