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Brian K. Wilcox, a Chaplain, vowed Contemplative in the Christian tradition, Associate of Greenbough House of Prayer, and Postulant of the Order of St. Anthony the Great, offers an interspiritual work focusing on cultivating the Heart of Compassion. His book of mystical Love poetry is An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love. Brian integrates wisdom from the major spiritual Paths. May you always know that you are blessed!
All is Welcome Here
Living in Love beyond Beliefs
We Share One Life, We Are One Life
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Smaragd - Meditation, Angela Marie Henriette, Flickr
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When I see you, not merely look at you, I see myself and move beyond merely looking at myself.
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Visiting the worship place of another faith group, I approached the door and bowed with hands folded to the leader of the community. Such a bow is a gesture saying, "I recognize and honor the Sacred in you, That you truly are. We share this Sacredness as One." Of course, this gesture admits a seeing beyond the person, or personality, to the Truth of Who we are together. I was bowing both to him and myself, therefore, for Oneness is one Oneness. He did not bow back. Later, during a time of answering questions from our group, he said his faith group did not bow to any human, for one was to bow only to God – which he consistently presented as separate and off somewhere else, it appeared to me. I, then, understood why he seemed not welcoming of the earlier bow. I, also, reflecting over many weeks, felt sad that one in the name of God cannot respectfully show such honor to the presence-of-God standing right in front of him or her. However, this would be true not only of his faith group, but of many in my faith group.
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Prayerfulness is Love; therefore, Inner Prayer leads us in a wider and wider embrace of the other – really, only what appears other, but Oneness is the prior Source of appearances. That you appear separate from and other than I am does not make it so. Thomas Merton, in his essay "From Pilgrimage to Crusade," writes of this widening embrace:
Our task now is to learn that if we can voyage to the ends of the earth and there find ourselves in the aborigine who most differs from ourselves, we will have made a fruitful pilgrimage. That is why pilgrimage is necessary, in some shape or other. Mere sitting at home and meditating on the divine presence is not enough for our time. We have to come to the end of a long journey and see that the stranger we meet there is no other than ourselves—which is the same as saying that we find Christ in him.
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My own Pilgrimage has been, to the consternation of many in my faith groups, from the limited embrace of fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity to a widening embrace of the one who appeared, once, unlike me, a stranger to me. Love has, at times against my conscious will or want, drawn me resisting into this widening circle of Love. This began as a Baptist embracing Catholics, and has continued to other apparent strangers: Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Atheists, Agnostics, … This widening embrace has been encouraged by the Work of Inner Prayer, the Grace Within. And this has included racial and ethnic embrace, as well as contending for gender equality and respect for all life.
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So, my bow, not received, was an expression of Prayerfulness, which is Love, and this is Embrace. I was saying that day, to this kind man seeking to respect God in denying the gesture of Oneness from God-Within both him and me, “I am here to embrace you, to know that I know myself in knowing you, that God is as near to us as we are to each other in this moment and this place.” Sadly, he could not see that, for his eyes are taught to see otherwise, and that I call Love he calls irreverence. Sadly, most persons still cannot see this simple, lovely Truth. This Truth is that we are each an expression of one Grace, one Life, and we are that One Life. We are each Icons of Divine Presence, a Presence not off somewhere else but here and now, as surely as you and I are here and now together with others seen and unseen. We are the tapestry of Love.
By simply, honestly, quietly
opening the Heart to God
consenting to His, to Her,
Being and Will
we come to Love more
as God Loves
as Goddess Loves
everyone
everywhere
equally
We are re-formed
into the image of this Grace
not by mere willpower
but by giving up our will
in consent to the Power of Life Itself -
and this Power is making us One, meaning
fulfilling the Truth that we are already One
for we come to be together here by the Being of One
before our conscious consent to one another in Love
And in that moment I say “Yes”
to recognizing that Grace in another
I am worshiping and honoring the Being-in-connection
that we call Creator, Christ, God....
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We are each a lovely, pure Rose, in the Garden of Grace.
*White Rose, Pyogenes..., Flickr
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*You can contact Brian at briankwilcox@yahoo.com. Please keep in mind, when reading from this site, that teachings cover an extended period of years and, therefore, reflect changes over that time.
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