The Whole World

Today looking east

In the opening pages of The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Notes for a Contemplative Ecology, Douglas Christie quotes the source of the title: 

When the mind has put off the old self and shall put on the one born of grace, then it will see its own state in the time of prayer resembling sapphire or the color of heaven; this state scripture calls the place of God that was seen by the elders on Mount Sinai. --Evagrius of Pontus 

This compelling book culminated for me, fittingly, in the closing chapter with its focus on “Practicing Paradise.” The capacity to revision paradise developed through a recurring theme related to the ecstatic, which connects with those special moments in the mystical journey and yet must not be cut off from everyday experience in nature. 

… we come to know ourselves in relation to the living world. Ecstasy begets intimacy, an intimate knowledge that can come to us only through relinquishment of a narrow, bounded self and an openness to an ever-emerging sense of participation in a larger whole. Attention to these moments when such ecstatic expansion occurs can quicken and deepen one’s sensitivity to the world, can open one to the possibility of a continuous exchange, an ever-more encompassing exchange. (p. 235) 

 We must honor and suffer our deep inner truth while also feeling and engaging our interconnectedness with the whole world, with all people and the rest of creation. Thoreau and Merton are frequently referenced for illustration and modeling. Considerable attention is also given to Denise Levertov, Czeslaw Milosz, Simone Weil, and others to show the way while leaving space for the necessary individual design and fit. 

      While the up-side of the path brightens the way, the essential passage through darkness must not be diminished. The next to last chapter “Kenosis: Empty, Emptied” attends significantly to affliction. “Mysticism must rest on crystal-clear honesty, can only come after things have been stripped down to their naked reality” (p. 283, quoting Etty Hillesum). Extending from the work of Simone Weil, Christie asserts “Healing and renewal and hope can issue forth from such contemplative practice; but the practice itself cannot be predicated upon expectation of them. One is called to remain empty, open, alert, always attentive to the presence of the other, particularly the suffering other” (p. 287). 

      With this inclusive acceptance of the whole, both the light and the dark, Paradise shifts to a texture that may be more complex and yet more real, perhaps more accessible. After all, didn’t the Garden of Eden include the serpent as well as the apple, nakedness as well as fig leaves, the self encountering the Other. The closing pages of The Blue Sapphire of the Mind encourage us to constitute a restructuring of paradise that empowers resistance to the destruction of our healthy space for living. 

It seems increasingly clear that we need the language of paradise to help us feel and understand the enormity of what we have lost and what we might yet recover. Which is why the personal accounts of engagement with paradise—lost, broken, renewed—remain so important to the larger work of healing the world (p. 348).

Today looking north

Wake-Up Call

Sunset Last Night

Imagine attending each moment, as if looking back from beyond, clenched from after-death, certain this “now” is the last, the perfection; imagine the shaking free, like a golden retriever with an over-wet stick fetched from the river of life. 

“But if you escape from these dark places

And come to rebehold the beautiful stars…

The presence of the divine does not lead to contempt for the world. The divine is understood, essentially, as the end (or the destination) of everything. And the things that have been lost, the things one knows one must lose, the friends, the houses: all of it is loved all the more intensely. Death exists in order to stamp out the satisfaction of possession, which debases things. 

   (p. 257 in Notes, The Unforgiveable and Other Writings by Christina Campo, translated by Alex Andriesse and introduction by Kathryn Davis).

“Campo was born with a congenital cardiac malformation, the very condition she claims caused her to be thrown into the ‘thick of [her] own destiny,’ her deformity elevated into an unusual kind of power, the ‘ability to penetrate impenetrable places.’” (Davis, Introduction, p. viii) 

Imagine holding the presence of death, head-on, eyes wide-open, possessions cast-off, and thereby living free of distractions with intensity through this heightened sense of destiny! The key possession: keen focus, alert for the golden gate confronting any who dare to see, who dare to enter the divine which may never be undone. 

Else the fear of death goes slaying, at least wounding life, stripping off awareness, then high-gloss lacquering over deep-knowing, alike crimson lipstick depriving true taste, faking ecstasy. Like choosing Solomon’s half-child instead of cohabiting loss. Go not unconscious into the last night; take not hand with death-fear. Shake free that shadow. Choose the dance. 

Antonio Machado put it best: “All Jesus’ words are one word: ‘Wake-Up!’” (As remembered from Robert Bly’s translation in Times Alone.) 

Also coming to mind from well over fifty years ago: Mom’s attempt to get her children ready for the school bus, best sung off-key: “Wake with the buttercup! Come on, Get up, GET UP. Rise with the sun. No more sleepy head. Time—Get-Out-of-Bed! [Or, if you must, try youtube’s Kate Smith - Here Comes the Sun (1930) (with lyrics).]

On a similar note, Douglas Christie tells of Thomas Merton’s late stage of life:

Merton was seeking not so much a new or different place (at least not for its own sake) as a renewed sense of his own deepest center… it was the interior change that mattered most… centering upon the elusive but necessary task of clarifying and deepening his quest for God.” 

(pp. 134-5 in The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Notes for a Contemplative Ecology)

Death is just a wake-up call from God. 

Today's Sunrise