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There are many ways to actualize a sense of this union through communion, for the sense of oneness arises from the sense of communion. Like the Celtic Christians we can discover and help create contexts that offer a lively sense of the Presence. Alone for example, doing our daily devotions at the same place can help a place become thinner, more open to the sense of Presence. Having a home altar can help. Some persons find walking in Nature the most likely site for a thin time. Churches can make it more likely to experience a thin time or thin place by the design and ornamentation of the sanctuary. Likewise, how we proceed to the place of worship together and how we enter can contribute to the thickness or thinness, so to speak, of a worship site. And, possibly, most important is attitude. We cannot expect the enjoyment of the Presence while we are entrenched in pridefulness, internal dissonance, unforgiveness, and alienation from others among us.
I offer three suggestions. First, practice learning to be content with the felt-absence of God. Often, indeed, you will find that through such loving detachment from neediness to sense the Presence, you will experience the beauty of the Presence-in-Absence. At other times, such loving detachment will melt the sense of separation. Second, alone and with others, seek to create a sacred place more open for the manifestation of our communion-in-union with the Wonderful Presence. Last, celebrate the Journey, assured thoughts come and go, while God is as fully in what you are thinking and feeling at any moment as any other moment. Then, you can relax and know the Divineness that flows through all things, undiminished, drawing us each and together into the full perfection of our Knowledge of our Source, Love. God flows through all the undulations of time, from macrocosm to microcosm. We can, thankfully, be free of reducing our experience of God to our experience of what “I think” or “I feel.” That is Faith, Living Faith.
In faith, let us Celebrate the Journey, Together! Let us Celebrate Together, with God, with each other.
Spiritual Exercise
1. Recall a time when you sensed a time of dryness open, suddenly, to a felt-sense of the Presence?
2. Do you have an altar at home? If not, consider creating one. A simple one, like having a table, an icon, a candle, some pictures of beloved ancestors or immediate family, a Bible, a book of favorite poems, … You can change the objects on the altar over time. Keep the altar simple. An uncluttered altar can speak of an uncluttered heart and mind.
3. What about the teaching of your oneness with God might threaten you? Allure you? How might you articulate your belief of Christ in such a way to discourage yourself from the vulnerability of interior intimacy with God in Christ, adoring Christ and affirming teaching about Christ, but keeping yourself from the radical call to enjoy the oneness He shares with “my Father”?
4. How does the Church encourage or discourage persons from realizing this radical but historic Christian teaching on possibility of realized union?
5. What are implications in St. John 17 between the realized oneness with God and that with others?
6. What is the significance of love in St. John 17?
7. Do you ever find yourself sabotaging your prayer practice just when you seem to be entering more deeply a thin time of profound intimacy with God? Can you let yourself accept that, become more aware, and develop a prayerful strategy to help yourself not run from that intimacy?
8. Do your meditation, daily, of at least two sessions, twenty to thirty minutes each.
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