|
Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of Divine Presence, Who is Love. While it focuses on Christian teaching, I hope persons of varied faiths will find inspiration here. Indeed, "God" can be whatever image helps us trust in the Sacred, by whatever means Grace touches us each. Please share this ministry with others, and please return soon. There is a new offering daily. And to be placed on the daily OneLife email list, to request notifications of new writings or submit prayer requests, write to briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
Blessings,
Brian Kenneth Wilcox MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader, Spiritual Counselor, and Chaplain.
You are invited to join Brian at his fellowship group on Facebook. The group is called OneLife Ministries An Interspiritual Contemplative Fellowship. Hope to see you there. Blessings.
To find the eternal communion, one must not be afraid to venture into that dark, black sea of what seems inexpressable absence. More painfully, one must choose to venture out, while the fire is still burning on the shore. For only what is truly begun here can continue in eternity.
*Cynthia Bourgeault. Love is Stronger than Death.
Today's Scripture
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
*Psalm 42.11, KJV
Spiritual Teaching
Episcopal priest and contemplative, Cynthia Bourgeault, in her Love Stronger than Death: The Mystical Union of Two Souls, shares the story of her soul relationship with a 70-year old Trappist monk and hermit, Brother Raphael Rafe. The closeness between them was before and after the death of Rafe.
Cynthia learned lessons from Rafe. While they both had a strong romantic attraction to each other, his vow of celibacy was honored. While they were equals, he proved a wise Teacher to her, even after the demise of his physical body.
In one scene we see Rafe sharing a past experience with Cynthia. He applies the lesson to her life, and our life, too. The scene occurs after Rafe leaves a monastery in Georgia, heading west for a life of more solitude. Cynthia shares as follows:
A friend of the monastery had offered a rustic camp in a remote corner of southern California, and there, uprooted from everything familiar and totally on his own, Rafe began his hermit life. It was an exhilarating time for him in its new-found freedom, but the strain of loneliness and disorientation not to mention the sheer physical brutality of the site gradually took its toll. Late one afternoon he was out in a thickly tangled, rock-strewn field, trying to move a huge boulder to clear a site for his cabin. He strained and strained with pickax and crowbar, but the boulder wouldn't give.
And suddenly I burst into tears, he said. I was so tired; it all just felt so lonely, so totally useless. I sat there on that rock and said to myself, 'Listen, God didn't ask you to come here, you came here yourself.'
I'd never felt that way before. It was an ache all the way to the end of the universe. I realized this must be my 'bare self.'
Over those next long months, Rafe said, he gradually became accustomed to it. That ache all the way to the end of the universe was how things would be, how they had to be. God can only work in us through our bare self, he averred. At that place, if a person is really willing to wait there, God says, 'Aha! Now we can get down to work. At last there is something to work with.'
Later, in an astonishing observation, Rafe added, We only think it's bare because the light is so intense that it blinds us.
* * *
We are in danger of a spiritual detour if we think spirituality is another word for escaping our bare self. The bare self, our nude being, is where God meets us. There is no way to gain the consolation of spiritual Fullness except through the dryness of our naked being before God.
Therefore, the spiritual Journey takes a cruciform shape. The passion of Christ is not just something that happened. The Passion is an archetype of an inner revolution that must occur within us, to find our fullness in the Fullness of Love.
If we come to our spiritual search motivated for a quick fix, we are in for a major disappointment. All the great spiritual Teachers inform us of the crucifixion of the egocentricity that rules the life of each of us when we are awakened to need for Divine intervention, for spiritual transformation.
* * *
Entering our nothingness, and feeling that nothingness, is the cavern that opens to the Light of Grace. This morning I experienced this. I began my morning readings. Then, I began my meditation. I entered into a state of sadness and desolation. I could not meditate, or so it seemed. I, finally, gave up. Slowly, a sense of Presence began moving through and over me. I entered into a process of Perfect Peace, of heavenly Presence, and profound Consolation. This lasted for a long time. I was aware of all this, yet, I was in contemplative ecstasy, or mystical union.
What happened is a microcosm of the spiritual Life. I began with a profound disquiet, and unrest, at the experience of my bare self. When giving up, surrendering before the pervasive disquiet, slowly, through settling into an acceptance of my bare self, Spirit permeated my being like fire permeating a log to use an image from St. John of the Cross.
Responding
Go into silence. Rest in your bare self. Open your mind and heart to the Divine Presence, however do not try to engender any consolations. Simply offer your bare being, your self, to the holy Presence of God, with the intent to give yourself as yourself to the Holy Spirit, and with consent to the being and presence of Grace.
* * *
*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis, with friends and under a vow of simplicity. Brian is an ecumenical-interspiritual leader, who chooses not to identify with any group, and renounces all titles of sacredness that some would apply to him, but seeks to be open to how Christ manifests in the diversity of Christian denominations and varied religious-spiritual traditions. He affirms that all spiritual paths lead ultimately back to Jesus Christ. He is Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings or submission of prayer requests at briankwilcox@yahoo.com . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*Contact the above email to book Brian for preaching, Spiritual Direction, retreats, workshops, animal blessing services, house blessings, or other spiritual requests. You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
|
