Devotion ... from Latin devovere, "to vow down, away." Hence, in all devotion, there is self-donation and self-demotion. Self-focus is turned toward something other, self-pride is taken into what we feel calls our being into itself in a union of respect, awe, and shared joy. Devotion is an act of intimacy in which we are changed and are never again the same. Through devotion, we become consecrated to a life unlike what we lived before, with a more subtle consciousness, with an emanating of a finer expression of the Light of Life.
Recollection of Hospice visit, 2017 -
I am her hospice chaplain. I mention a time before, when I visited her many months prior. I tell her of what we shared, for her mind is passing on, even as her body. When she hears "Lord's Supper," a rite celebrated in her religious fellowship, of which she can no longer join, she gives forth plaintive words, "Oh! I wish I could go back and have the Lord's Supper!" Her eyes fill with desirous sadness. Thankfully, I have a Holy Communion kit in my vehicle and go and get it - after all, this may be her last opportunity before she leaves, so I cannot wait until the next visit.
Having no bread, we gather some crackers from the home: not ideal, by far, but it is what we have. I prepare for the rite, we celebrate, we rejoice, and this dear One so in love with her Christ sheds tears of devotion. She beams with gratitude. She remembers her Lord of Love at least one more time in this Meal, before her time to move on from here.
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The patient reminded me, as I reflected later, that spirituality provides ordinary means, like crackers and juice that day, both gifts of the Earth, to connect us to the Heavens, to join in a real way the earthy with the Heavenly, to heal the split between temporal life and timeless life. She reminded me that all spirituality is a growth in capacity to love... and our love for the One Presence and that of other humans, indeed creatures and Creation, expressing that One Presence, is a single Love.
Surely religion is spiritual when it nurtures this Loving, when it provides earthly means to express desire and delight with the heavenly Presence, heavenly as to quality, but near, even more so, than the ordinary objects that are means to open our hearts to Grace. Therefore, any talk of nonduality or transcendence must lead us into communion, for One and oneness surely expresses as a communion of the Many, as you and I, everyone and everything.
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Recollection from Silent Retreat, ca. 2014 -
She sat by herself, as I sat by myself. She was silently aglow with love as I had not seen prior and calmly ardent as I had ever witnessed in a person. I was in a Catholic Chapel. I did not understand. I had been raised a Protestant.
I came to understand why such a smile and contented, quietly joyful devotion. I was informed later the rite was Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. The Tabernacle, sitting on the altar, enclosed the Host, blessed to be the Body of Christ and eaten by the earthy Body of Christ, the gathered adorers of this man who lived 2000 years before and, somehow, has lived on in hearts since.
I recall that shining face some 20 years onward, adoring her Beloved. May I never forget. May that devotion burn aglow, and more, in this heart in which I live and am in the Heart of Life
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Are we not born by Love to Love with one Heart undivided - which is to say one Devotion, one act of Union unceasing and conscious? Ever deepening with time, a closeness becoming closer? Surely, yes, the greatest knowing is a knowing of Love, by Love, for Love alone. May we all be consumed in and by this Love, the Beloved of many faces and names.
*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.
