Only One Way

'Christ's will was, and is, to unite. Think how he wept over Jerusalem!
Think of his prayer, “That they all might be one.” But people did not and do not want this. Christ said. “I am the Way,” and that is what matters.
Not what denomination or church group one belongs to, not social work, not reform, etc.—but the Way. Modern life is so complicated and torn, so distracting and disintegrating. Whereas the Way is simple, light and straight, and unifies the whole of life.'
- Kathleen Hasenberg

It's lovely to be reminded to halt the tide towards divisions, dichotomies and fragmentations and to always look for unification amidst diversity. Life IS simple if I will let it be. I get so caught up, so uptight about so many things. Things to do, things to learn, things I must know... ad nauseum. If I will only let go for a moment, and come into Reality as it is. That is all there is to life -- God and me. - YY

Everything becomes a distraction

'Suppose that my "poverty" be a secret hunger for spiritual riches: suppose that by pretending to empty myself, pretending to be silent, I am really trying to cajole God into enriching me with some experience - what then? Then everything becomes a distraction. All created things interfere with my quest for some special experience. I must shut them out, or they will tear me apart. What is worse - I myself am a distraction.
But, unhappiest thing of all - if my prayer is centered in myself, if it seeks only an enrichment of my own self, my prayer itself will be my greatest potential distraction. Full of my own curiosity, I have eaten of the tree of Knowledge and torn myself away from myself and from God. I am left rich and alone and nothing can assuage my hunger: everything I touch turns into a distraction.'

- Merton, Thomas.Thoughts In Solitude.Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New
York. 1956. Pg. 93, 94.

It seems to take a lot of wearing down - disillusionment, frustration, failures - to give up chasing things. The worst thing one could chase, of course, is spirituality. And what a contradiction in terms that is! For real spirituality is the ultimate non-attachment and non-pursuit. It is a pursuit that only happens when one gives it up. And sometimes when we have a bit too much self energy, we try to try, in vain, of course. - YY

Real Love

'Let everyone understand that the real love of God does not consist in tear-shedding, nor in that sweetness and tenderness for which we often long, just because they console us, but in serving God by serving those around us, in justice, fortitude of soul, and humility.'


- Teresa of Avila

The ultimate test, the highest result of true contemplation must be the most liberal of service. Because servanthood is the measure of completeness and freedom. When I have renounced all need (even the need to be useful!), only serving remains. When I serve so self-lessly, I have complete freedom from the grips of Self. - YY

Liberty Worth Having

'How watchful we must be to keep the crystal well that we were made, clear!-- that it not be made turbid by our contact with the world, so that it will not reflect objects. What other liberty is there worth having, if we have not freedom and peace in our minds--if our inmost and most private man is but a sour and turbid pool? If you would avoid uncleanness and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable.'
- by Henry David Thoreau

The Cause of Unhappiness

'If you look carefully you will see that there is one thing and only one thing that causes unhappiness. The name of that thing is attachment. What is an attachment? An emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy.'
- by Anthony de Mello

There must be a million things in my life that I falsely believe I need for happiness. This is the wisdom of all spiritual gurus - desire and attachment is the root of all misery, it is our self-enslavement to things, power, opinion that keeps us from our spiritual freedom. It is a hard pill to swallow, even harder to walk the long journey of detachment. And I will surely be plagued by immense insecurity and self-doubt every step of the way.. Yet it's a journey I must make.. - YY

Out of the Pit - Abraham Heschel

'The greatest task of our time is to help our fellow human beings out of the pit. God will return to us when we are willing to let Him in— into our banks and factories, into our Congress and clubs, into our homes and theaters. For God is everywhere or nowhere, the father of all people or of none, concerned about everything or nothing. Only in His presence shall we learn that the glory of humankind is not in its will to power but in its power of compassion. We will reflect either the image of God's presence or that of a beast. There can be no neutrality.'
- Abraham Joshua Heschel

The Cloud of Unknowing

"Now when I call this exercise a darkness or a cloud, do not think that it is a cloud formed out of the vapours which float in the air, or a darkness such as you have in your house at night, when your candle is out. For such a darkness or such a cloud you can certainly imagine by subtle fancies, as though it were before your eyes, even on the clearest day of summer; and likewise, on the darkest night of winter, you can imagine a clear shining light. But leave such falsehood alone. I mean nothing of that sort. When I say 'darkness,' I mean a privation of knowing, just as whatever you do not know or have forgotten is dark to you, because you do not see it with your spiritual eyes. For this reason, that which is between you and your God is termed, not a cloud of the air, but a cloud of unknowing."

Light From Light: An Anthology of Christian Mysticism. Edited by Louis Dupre & James A. Wiseman, O.S.B. Paulist Press, New York. 1988. P.230.

The Cloud of Unknowing. (14th Century).

Helplessness

'Sometimes, meditation is nothing but an unsuccessful struggle to turn ourselves to God, to seek His Face by faith. Any number of things beyond our control may make it morally impossible for one to meditate effectively. In that case, faith and good will are sufficient. If one has made a really sincere and honest effort to turn himself to God and cannot seem to get his wits together at all, then the attempt will have to count as a meditation. This means that God, in His mercy, accepts our unsuccessful efforts in the place of a real meditation. Sometimes it happens that this interior helplessness is a sign of real progress in the interior life - for it makes us depend more completely and peacefully on the mercy of God.'
- by Merton, Thomas, in Thoughts In Solitude, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New
York. 1956. Pg. 50.

Entering Eternity

'It is truly the Christian's birthright to remain silent and recollected, like Mary of Bethany, in the Presence of the Father. This Presence is not, however, something outside one or separate from one, as when we see or imagine someone in front of us. It is rather a matter of entering inwardly within that unique Presence which fills time and eternity, the Presence of the Father to the Son and of the Son to the Father.

At the very heart of that glory and joy we hear the Thou which God in his love addresses to us from all eternity, and we no longer have the right to utter our own 'I' except within the Father's eternal I, where Being awakes to Itself.'

from The Fire of Silence and Stillness: An Anthology of Quotations for the Spiritual Journey. Edited by Paul Harris. Templegate Publishers, Illinois. 1995.

Of thunderbolts and sunsets

'Sometimes a thunderbolt will shoot from a clear sky; and sometimes, into the midst of a peaceful family – without warning of gathered storm above or slightest tremble of earthquake beneath – will fall a terrible fact, and from that moment everything is changed. The air is thick with cloud, and cannot weep itself clear. There may come a gorgeous sunset, though.'
- George MacDonald

Like A Butterfly - Emmy Arnold

'It dawns on me more and more how trivial and short our lifespan is. It is like smoke; like a butterfly—it passes so quickly, flying away. Nobody, no one can bring back wasted years. One wishes that one would have always lived with eternity in mind.' - Emmy Arnold

It seems to me the certainty of mortality, when we are not delusionally denying it, provokes two kinds of responses. One is despairing - life is short, I'm going to die anyway, so what can I achieve? The second is neurotic - life is short, so I must do as much as I can within the years given to me. Isn't there a third, more wholesome way of embracing death and living in the present with eternity in full view? What would that look like? - YY

Only Connect

'It is not physical solitude that actually separates one from others; not physical isolation, but spiritual isolation. It is not the desert island nor the stony wilderness that cuts you from the people you love. It is the wilderness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger. When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too.

If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others. How often in a large city, shaking hands with my friends, I have felt the wilderness stretching between us. Both of us were wandering in arid wastes, having lost the springs that nourished us - or having found them dry. Only when one is connected to one's own core is one connected to others, I am beginning to discover. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.'
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

How often have I been saved by a few moments of quiet. When things were spiralling out of control, when I was headed for a sure crash and burn down the F1 circuit of life. When there were no indicators whatsoever to where I was going, what was happening. It was only silence. But IT IS in silence that our redemption is found, when there are no answers, no light, no hope. Only in silence do I hear my heart's true cry and God's still voice. Then I know. Then, I am found. Then, I am truly me again - and from nowhere can I relate to another person except from being in touch with my true self. - YY

The Most Precious Insights

'You yourself are the child you must learn to know, rear, and above all enlighten. To demand that others should provide you with textbook answers is like asking a strange woman to give birth to your baby. There are insights that can be born only of your own pain, and they are the most precious. Seek in your child the undiscovered part of yourself.'
- Janusz Korczak (1878-1942, Polish-Jewish children´s writer and educator who is as well known in Europe as Anne Frank. Like her, he died in the Holocaust and left behind a diary; unlike her, he had a chance to escape that fate-a chance he chose not to take.)

I used to disagree when a mentor-friend said, we are two persons - the adult and the child. It's taken me years to now understand and fully agree with him. In many ways I am still the person I was 25 years ago. I still have the same longings, same fears, and same hurts. But in many ways that child has been supressed and buried - much by the self-imposed expectations of the adult. I want to be, do, think, speak in ways that isn't really me, just the image of a person I'd like to be - the 'false construct' so to speak.

The only way to real joy and authenticity is to find that child again, exhume him from the grave I've buried him alive in years ago. Go back, I must, to confront my fears. Find healing for the hurts. And pursue my longings and passions the I was made to. - YY

Thoughts inspired by Ray Bradbury

Reading through the last pages of Yancey's collection of authors-review-sifu-authors (More Than Words Can Say), I was very heartened by what Calvin Miller had to say about Ray Bradbury's worldview streaming through his books.

He says: 'Bradbury warns us away from any science that leaves no room for imagination; I find a similar danger at work in some Christian circles. The gospel itself may be made harsh by precepts void of warm narrative. In spite of the fact that the Bible is filled with parables and stories, our zeal to evangelize and to encounter secular cultures with moral reform has shackled evangelicals to deadening presuppositions. These presuppositions do not kill because they are false (they are indeed true) but because they strip away mystery and process - the very ingredients of a good story. In their evangelistic intensity some Christians see fiction as a waste of time in a lost society where so many are "perishing in hell."'

Further on he says: 'Life can bear only so much reality; we need the mysteries to live. In every message that I preach, I call men, not to a scientifically reasonable faith, but to a faith which gains its power through stories - stories of God invading history through a virgin's womb and then shattering death (in defiance of more reasonable, and powerless, definitions of death).'

Bradbury, Miller claims, lifts him from the 'heaviness of earth' and helped him 'believe in a better world' by giving him a 'prospect of both goodness and hope.'

Indeed if we think and live in a closed system only of present woes and dreariness, then there is no reason for tomorrow. Not even for today. The only worthwhile reason I have for living each day is a higher reality, a prospect of goodness in every moment and hope in a greater future. We are not merely creatures bound in time and space. Standing on the foundation of the past, invigorated by the prospect of the future, we live fully in the present.

We are gifted with imagination and the capacity for immense mystery and awe. These are elements that must be present in some amount to keep us plodding on. It is the invisible rope that lifts us above the mundane and gives us forward drive.We are nothing if not for our ability to dream. We die when our dreams die.

And it seems fiction is the most powerful vehicle to "trick" our logic-locked minds into seeing afresh. Capturing higher truths, those lofty things beyond the grasp of reasoning. We need stories more than ever. Let's never lose the ability to see the story in our lives - if just to give us a sense of adventure and to live with passion.