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If we love our brothers and sisters, it shows that we have passed from death to life. But a person who has no love is still dead.

*I John 3.14

Wisdom Story

A young African Christian visited a school and watched some girls sewing. He noticed that the thread always followed the needle, and he saw in that a weighty, spiritual truth. Later that evening, he prayed, “O Lord, You are the needle, and I am the thread!”

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The entire spiritual life entails a practical positioning. Practical in that a theoretical or doctrinal claim does not empower us to accept the emptying of ourselves of ourselves, to be filled with Life, to be made available to be Loved by Love and to Love in Love others.

Then, we can pose a question, "Can a person truly abide in Love and not be overflowing with the Fruit of Love?" We need to be careful in coming to a conclusion on this matter. For often Grace has to do much healing work within us before there is an overflow of Fruitfulness. What begins, however, as a rivulet, can become a river. Yet, we cannot make this happen, as Love creates Love. And we fall into Grace, more than finding Grace or receiving Grace. We see the appearance of fruition and are amazed, wondering, “How did this happen?” For Grace is so natural, and often seems to defy our spiritual effortfulness at finding and creating.

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The surrender to Love by Love, to Love, manifests a tendency. Life begins expressing in and through us. We have been under the guidance of bios, fleshly life, but now, we are under the blessing of zoe, spiritual life. We become an instrument in the hand of Life. Our docility to this Life positions us to Love in Love, rather than trying to generate Love or get to Love or become Loving.

In Love means you and I are placed within a supernatural order, a graceful alignment with the Living Christ, the Buddha Nature. The resulting, organic tendency will be evidenced in a fresh life orientation. This new orientation initiates us into a disorientation, however, as the old life is drained of vitality, and our desires are oriented to this new Life. This is confusing, for the interests of the past die into the interests of the evolving present, unfolding in a deepening yes to this Life. We may see ourselves straining to fill the corpse of the past with the breath of the present. This is essential in exhausting our faith in the past and our deepening our trust in the present.

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Colossians 3.3 has, "For you died to this life [bios], and your real life [zoe] is hidden with Christ in God" (NLT). This does not mean that we lose the life of the body and mind; indeed, this is an instrument sacred, a means of Love. Rather, we die to the control of bios as the determination, the center of our interests and priorities. This death is a reorientation of the faculties of body and mind that estranged us from zoe. The body and mind are, in theological terms, consecrated to the higher Life, to Christ. This begins the on-going process of sanctification, which is the process, initiated and animated by Grace of alignment with Grace, of having the total self actually and fully animated by Love. This is a process, at least for most of us, not completed in this life.

This repositioning in Christ – though others may refer to this differently, based on worldview - is an actual event, not a mere metaphor, and it entails having the whole self taken into the Spirit of Christ by the Holy Spirit, or intimacy of Love. By means of this new position, in which Grace positions us, we each are taken into God - as St. Paul has it: “hidden with Christ in God,” or “hidden in Christ in God.”

Therefore, as a Christian, I am actually in Christ, really in God. Yet, I am not this in my understanding of it, or anyone else's understanding of it. So, in this Life, even the words and worldview by which I was led to say “Yes” to the reorientation, dissolve. Certainly, this is a mystical teaching, as many of the New Testament teachings are, but mystical only means actual. To say being in Christ cannot be understood, is a mystery, does not limit the reality of its realness. And to say that this cannot be placed in an ideology, even an ideology of Christ, does not make it less real. Indeed, the Real admits of nothing outside Itself, not even an understanding of Itself as inspired by Itself.

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Our own Solitude, which is an inner path to realizing intimately our being-in-Life alone, paradoxically is a most unselfish act. In this Aloneness, which is a conscious receptivity within Love to Love Itself alone, we are drawn into the boundlessness and richness of Grace. This means that unless I enter into my own aloneness in Life, I will fail to meet others there and to take it consciously into the world. Indeed, I will not likely respect the need of another for solitude in Solitude, or his or her own inner solitude which I in myself cannot penetrate.

Thomas Merton writes, in No Man Is An Island, "Indeed, the soul that does not seek to dress itself in possessions and to revel in purchased or stolen satisfactions will often be left completely alone by other men. The true solitary does not have to run away from others: they cease to notice him, because he does not share their love for an illusion."

Therefore, I must get to know my own being hidden in Christ in God, or in the Manifested Life in the Hidden Life, the Known in the Unknown. I must invite an honest seeing of how I try to clothe myself with an illusory life, a false togetherness with others. I must see how religion and spirituality often seek to lead me into a religious or spiritual falseness, and such becomes a veil from the Embrace of all in the singularity and simplicity of Love. Am I willing to die to my religion or spirituality to be the captive of Love and, therefore, in Union with everyone?

I cannot do this simply by external works and doctrine. I must go within into the Withinness that is God. I must honor the need of the other for that same solitude, then, solitude can meet solitude. I can do this knowing that he or she will be most in communion with me, most loved by me and most receptive to my love, by being in communion with his or her being in Christ, in God, and honoring that how he or she speaks of this may be different from my speech. Yet, our communion is not grounded in speech, but prior to speech, in Communion. We are, indeed, most intimate in Life, in Love, which is to say, “We are most loving.” And to be in this Life means our lives alone and together pass through our lives apart into Life together, as the thread passes through the needle. Our solitude opens to the Solitude that is we ourselves in Communion, for we are in God, which is the Oneness that is the Ground of our particular solitude and silence. Without the particularity, there is no Communion to be received, and no particularity through which to love in Love the other. Should we, then, be surprised that aloneness is an expression and invitation to All-one-ness?

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