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A Way in the Wood
Bath, Maine
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When discussing her spiritual practice, she said, "My goal is to become a buddha." The Sage asked, "Could it be it's enough to become yourself?"
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
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June 2007 -
I wrote the following when still serving as a pastor in the institutional church. I am serving now as an interspiritual chaplain and not participating in the institutional church, and, yes, my experience of God, or the Sacred, is still evolving and, I hope, deepening. I anticipate it will continue, for the mind cannot fathom the living Truth. And there are always unplumbed depths to be explored, enjoyed, and lived for the blessing of our world. The Sacred remains the Sacred, but how we experience and perceive that meeting with the Holy changes over time. That is a sign of integrity and an honest engagement with your spiritual practice and path.
The other night I read Thomas Merton's words, "We must become like ourselves, and stop living 'beside' ourselves." Sometimes we read some words that speak to our core. They become a transformative Word to us and shape our lives for a time or always. These words are like a mirror suddenly put before our True Face at just the time we need to listen to them. Such has been the power of those words of Merton.
I feel, know inwardly in an embodied way, that I am growing into those words. They are Word to me, by the Grace of Christ. I am coming to realize wonderfully, incarnationally, sacramentally ~ my own flesh being the offering to the Godhead ~ that the only way to God is through the person that persons call Brian. That Brian is a gift to this world, in all his apparent and subtle particulars, as is, not as some ideal of what he should or could be.
Then, a few days later, I read Gerald G. May begin his book The Awakened Heart with words that impress upon me the words of Merton, words the Holy Spirit is working into my soul. May quotes from the classic The Cloud of Unknowing [and comments]: "In the interior life we must never take our experiences as the norm for everyone else."
So, I embrace and celebrate my freedom to experience God in a way that fits me, even as I celebrate the many ways I see others know God. Possibly, I live in a Christianity whose greatest challenge now is just this ~ to see God in ways the Church has historically refused to celebrate, to repent of its astigmatic vision. To repent of confusing the ways of Christianity with the Way before Christianity, historically speaking.
This moving into myself, body, mind, soul, spirit, is a deeply felt sacramental experience for me. To accept myself fully and celebrate all I am may be the greatest offering I can give back to God, as well as the most gracious gift I can give to those who live around me. Possibly, by my sacramental movement into the particularity of my life, I will be an invitation for them to do the same.
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As you reflect on the above words, I invite you to inquire... What does "sacramental particularity" mean to me? How does sacredness manifest through my uniqueness? or What are the talents and personality traits through which I bless others? Who, being faithful to their uniqueness, has encouraged me to do the same?
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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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