Monthly Archives: August 2017

Aug182017

Seriousness within acceptance and love

…those tasks that have been entrusted to us are difficult; almost everything serious is difficult; and everything is serious. If you just recognize this and manage, out of yourself, out of your own talent and nature, out of your own experience and childhood and strength, to achieve a wholly individual relation…then you will no longer have to be afraid of losing yourself and becoming unworthy of your dearest possession.

Bodily delight is a sensory experience, not any different from pure looking or the pure feeling with, which a beautiful fruit fills the tongue; it is a great, an infinite learning that is given to us, a knowledge of the world, the fulness and the splendor of all knowledge. And it is not our acceptance of it that is bad; what is bad is that most people misuse this learning and squander it and apply it as a stimulant on the tired places of their lives and as a distraction rather than as a way of gathering themselves for their highest moments. People have even made eating into something else; necessity on the one hand, excess on the other; they have muddied the clarity of this need, and all the deep, simple needs in which life renews itself have become just as muddy. But the individual can make them clear for himself and live them clearly (not the individual who is dependent, but the solitary man). He can remember that all beauty in animals and plants is a silent, enduring form of love and yearning, and he can see the animal, as he sees plants, patiently and willingly uniting and multiplying and growing, not out of physical pleasure, not out of physical pain, but bowing to necessities that are greater than pleasure and pain, and more powerful than will and withstanding. If only human beings could more humbly receive the mystery which the world is filled with, even the smallest Things, could bear it, endure it, more solemnly, feel how terribly heavy it is, instead of taking it lightly. –‘Letters to a Young Poet’ Rainer Maria Rilke

Love Song

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn’t touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn’t resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin’s bow,
which draws *one* voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song

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Aug172017

Authenticity

It is not a brilliancy which dazzles, but a delicate whiteness and a brilliancy infused, furnishing the most excessive delight to the eyes, never wearied thereby, nor by the visible brightness which enables us to see a beauty so divine.  It is a light so different from any light here below, that the very brightness of the sun we see, in comparison with the brightness and light before our eyes, seems to be something so obscure, that no one would ever wish to open his eyes again.  It is like most pellucid water running in a bed of crystal, reflecting the rays of the sun, compared with most muddy water on a cloudy day, flowing on the surface of the earth.  Not that there is anything like the sun present here, nor is the light like that of the sun: this light seems to be natural; and, in comparison with it, every other light is something artificial.  It is a light which knows no night; but rather, as it is always light, nothing ever disturbs it.  In short, it is such that no man, however gifted he may be, can ever, in the whole course of his life, arrive at any imagination of what it is.  God puts it before us so instantaneously, that we could not open our eyes in time to see it, if it were necessary for us to open them at all.  But whether our eyes be open or shut, it makes no difference whatever; for when our Lord wills, we must see it, whether we will or not.  No distraction can shut it out, no power can resist it, nor can we attain to it by any diligence or efforts of our own.  –The Life of St Teresa of Avila

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Aug142017

Proper authority

I saw that, though He was God, He was man also; that He is not surprised at the frailties of men, that He understands our miserable nature, liable to fall continually, because of the first sin, for the reparation of which He had come. I could speak to Him as to a friend, though He is my Lord, because I do not consider Him as one of our earthly Lords, who affect a power they do not possess, who give audience at fixed hours, and to whom only certain persons may speak. If a poor man has any business with these, it will cost him many goings and comings, and currying favour with others, together with much pain and labour before he can speak to them. Ah, if such a one has business with a king! Poor people, not of gentle blood, cannot approach him, for they must apply to those who are his friends, and certainly these are not persons who tread the world under their feet; for they who do this speak the truth, fear nothing, and ought to fear nothing; they are not courtiers, because it is not the custom of a court, where they must be silent about those things they dislike, must not even dare to think about them, lest they should fall into disgrace. O King of glory, and Lord of all kings! oh, how Thy kingly dignity is not hedged about by trifles of this kind! Thy kingdom is forever. We do not require chamberlains to introduce us into Thy presence. The very vision of Thy person shows us at once that Thou alone art to be called Lord. Thy Majesty is so manifest that there is no need of a retinue or guard to make us confess that Thou art King.  –The Life of St Teresa of Avila

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Aug132017

Hearkening

At the mountain of God, Horeb,
Elijah came to a cave where he took shelter.
Then the LORD said to him,
“Go outside and stand on the mountain before the LORD;
the LORD will be passing by.”
A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains
and crushing rocks before the LORD—
but the LORD was not in the wind.
After the wind there was an earthquake—
but the LORD was not in the earthquake.
After the earthquake there was fire—
but the LORD was not in the fire.
After the fire there was a tiny whispering sound.
When he heard this,
Elijah hid his face in his cloak
and went and stood at the entrance of the cave.
1 Kings chapter 19

The preparation for listening to God is listening to others. The Statutes insist on the quality of welcome we are to offer to our brothers when we have occasion to converse with them or to relate to them; we must know how to listen to them, and understand them with both heart and mind; we are to go beyond mere appearance, and not allow ourselves to be troubled by the different ways they may have of approaching the same questions. So the Statutes give us a whole pedagogy of what it means to listen. Listening to others is not the aim of our life, to be sure, but welcoming our neighbor in this way will train our hearts to become silent, in order to be ready to receive the secret of the Other. For, in whatever circumstances, our main concern must not be just to receive some message or other, but, through the message, to discover the depth of the heart of the one who is speaking to us. If we are not able to do this with the brothers we can see, how will we be able to do it with God whom we cannot see?

These are only brief indications, but enough for you to see how this touches on the very heart of our life of solitude. This solitude does not consist in shutting ourselves away between four walls in order to cut ourselves off; or refusing to welcome others; or trying to be alone with ourselves at all costs. On the contrary, solitude is the privileged place for listening, a place of silence; so, not a place of emptiness, but of communion with a reality which cannot be expressed in words. Normally, then, it is with joyous enthusiasm that we set off to master silence and the art of listening. However, experience shows that the results often fall short of our expectations. –‘The Wound of Love’ by A. Carthusian

Inspiration received—a book, and listened to, from the Cuban poet after Mass. Replace Rome with modern civilization.

Dear Sir,

I received your letter August 29th in Florence, and it has taken me this long—two months—to answer. Please forgive this tardiness, but I don’t like to write letters while I am traveling because for letter-writing I need more than the most necessary tools: some silence and solitude and a not too unfamiliar hour.

We arrived in Rome about six weeks ago, at a time when it was still empty, the hot, the notoriously feverish Rome, and the circumstance, along with other practical difficulties in finding a place to live, helped make the restlessness around us seem as if it would never end, and the unfamiliarity lay upon us with the weight of homelessness. In addition, Rome (if one has not yet become acquainted with it) makes one feel stifled with sadness for the first few days: through the gloomy and lifeless museum atmosphere that it exhales, through the abundance of its pasts, which are brought forth and laboriously held up (pasts on which a tiny present subsists), through the terrible overvaluing, sustained by scholars and philologists and imitated by the ordinary tourist in Italy, of all these disfigured and decaying Things, which, after all, are essentially nothing more than accidental remains from another time and from a life that is not and should not be ours. Finally, after weeks of daily resistance, one finds oneself somewhat composed again, even though still a bit confused, and one says to oneself: No, there is not more beauty here than in other places, and all these objects, which have been marveled at by generation after generation, mended and restored by the hands of workmen, mean nothing, are nothing, and have no heart and no value–but there is much beauty here, because everywhere there is much beauty. Water infinitely full of life move along the ancient aqueducts into the great city and dances in the many city squares over white basins of stone and spread out in large, spacious pools and murmurs by day and lifts up its murmuring to the night, which is vast here and starry and soft with winds. And there are gardens here, unforgettable boulevards, and staircases designed by Michelangelo, staircases constructed on the pattern of downward-gliding waters, and as they descend, widely giving birth to step out of step as if it were wave out of wave. Through such impressions one gathers oneself, wins oneself back from the exacting multiplicity, which speaks and chatters there (and how talkative it is!) and one slowly learns to recognize the very few Things in which something eternal endures that one can love and something solitary (endures) that one can gently take part in.  –‘Letters to a Young Poet’ by Rainer Maria Rilke

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Aug112017

Easy does it

Did they (Peter, John, and James at the Transfiguration) realize what was going to happen? It is not likely, judging from the naivete of their reactions. They climbed the mountain with him; but, as we have said, we cannot speak of a prayer which would be strictly theirs. They are simply engulfed in the radiance of Jesus. Their contemplation does not spring forth from their own depths, but is an overflow of the prayer of Jesus which descends upon them. Today, ‘God himself has shone in their hearts to radiate the knowledge of his glory, the glory on the face of Christ’ (2 Corinthians 4:6).

We should see in them much more than simple witnesses: they truly participate in the mystery which is being accomplished before their eyes, in so far as they receive that which Jesus gives them in simplicity and humility. God is content with this good will; even as Peter makes a remark which betrays his lack of understanding of the situation, the cloud through which they will enter into intimacy with the Father is already approaching.

‘A bright cloud covered them with its shadow.’ We find here the hallmark of the most solemn moments in salvation history, when God chooses to reveal his greatest secrets. On Sinai, Moses entered into a cloud before Yahweh revealed his name to him. In like manner, at the dedication of the new temple, Solomon found himself taken up into a cloud as Yahweh came to take possession of his dwelling place. Finally, at the Annunciation, is this not the characteristic sign of the presence of God that the angel gives to the Virgin: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow’?

Here, the, are three poor disciples, men of no exceptional merit, who enter into the cloud, the loftiest image of divine power. They have direct access to the Father, for they are close to Jesus and are his friends. Their dullness, their incomprehension, does not matter, their hearts are given totally to Jesus and that is enough. –‘The Wound of Love’ A. Carthusian Miscellany

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