As if you were on fire from within the moon lives in the lining of your skin.
*Pablo Nerudo
I want to drink the loveliness of One I cannot know but can love.
*Arem Nahariim-Samadhi
* * *
Reflecting on Holy Communion, or the Lord's Supper, as ritual, why? Why am I drawn to something that in some way I do not need to be fulfilled in my life? That I do not see as an essential? Possibly, not needing it is part of why I am drawn to it. Likewise, I am powerfully drawn to Jesus, yet, I do not feel I need him as I once did. Also, if anything, I sense I love him more selflessly, than earlier in my life - and I know him - it seems - more, but have less certainty about he was and is. I find him absolutely lovely, beautiful, and I am drawn to that Beauty. Possibly, there is less need of the more we are drawn into Beauty by Beauty. Possibly, the sense of need itself is a veil to the purest of loving, of gracing presence with presence, presence in presence.
Reflecting on the Lord's Supper from yesterday, I recall the Buddha's wisdom of the Middle Way, and that Form is Formlessness (or, Emptiness) and Formlessness (or, Emptiness) is Form. In matter, we receive the mystery and intangibility of the Formless. I, also, recall the Creation Story in the Hebrew Scripture, where the reading is, "And G-D saw all that He had formed and, look!, it was very good." The biblical Hebrew has diverse shades of meaning for "good," or tov, including "beautiful." Form is beautiful; we are bathed in beauty. Then, the Creative Power must be beautiful, and, in some way, in partaking with others of the ritual of the Supper, we are together opening our bodies, our shared form, to the attractiveness and attraction of Grace. In some sense, this seems to come from both without and within ourselves, to each one and to all-as-one. Both manifestations of a singular Beauty, Grace.
Could it be that Beauty itself is healing? And that we meet G-D in encountering the Beauty in life, in its harmonic diversity? Could it be that often religion becomes ugly - such as in prejudice toward apparent "others" - and disconnects us from the Beautiful and Beauty - so, Love? I have seen more ugliness in religion than I can put into words and would want to share, and I can understand why many will have nothing to do with religion - sadly. Why this ugliness, when Grace is beautiful? Is it possible the flight from form in much religion and transcendental, or metaphysical, thought is a flight from Beauty, a denial of Grace, a refutation of Formlessness and Form - for to disavow one is to disavow both?
Anyway, I found it beautiful to share in the lovely Meal with others, and not have one idea of its meaning, or the proper theology of it, to cross my mind. Beauty frees, liberating of the ideas that thicken a veil between us and Life Itself, manifesting in the harmony of apparent opposites. Such a lovely Tapestry is woven by Wisdom, for our Hearts to enjoy and to draw us together as One being One.
To say "Yes" to Life, is to say "Yes" to Beauty. All life can become this lovely expression of Grace to us, this Ritual of Love, for Life already is this.
*Beauty is the Shadow of God... , Mary Ann, Flickr
