Water Flows as Does Love

Photo by M J Tangonan on Unsplash

You are I and I am you. I was given the assurance that there was no intermediary between God and myself. — Angela of Foligno

A little over a year ago I stopped working with younger students—a significant part of my teaching load. I made this decision while I still had the heartfelt joy of teaching and facilitating reverence for the human form to younger minds. At the same time came an internal witnessing that I had less patience and desire to articulate the technical language in order to cultivate a student’s understanding of striving for the perfect line in a battement tendu.

Although I had pondered the idea for a while, unlike some of my other transitions, I hadn’t actually formulated a plan. It was abrupt, messy, and difficult. Like a fish out of water I found myself floundering about for days, weeks, months, and yes, a year to fill the enormous void of the decision. While there were many mundane tasks that called for my attention from cleaning the house to meal planning nothing filled the enormous loss in creative expression and self-fulfillment those classes provided, in spite of a nagging sensation that a new direction was on the verge of happening if I would allow it.

Needless to say, initially, I set about filling time with excessive activities, explorations, and long dreamed of desires only to discover that what was really needed was rest and silence. A productive rest in the spaciousness of nature, the stillness, the beingness of not doing for anybody or not having to show up at an appointed time. As it turned out it was the best gift I could have given myself, or I should say, nature could have provided.

When I took the time to assess the situation, it was overwhelmingly and incredibly insane the things I managed to squeeze into an already full schedule. To make room for what my soul was calling me to do and to seal it with quiet and nurturance was a humble reckoning of which my soul and spirit silently breathed relief. I had a sense of “Le pointe vierge” which Thomas Merton referred to as a shining gem—

It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.

To say I was in a crisis of spirit may be an over statement, but I was definitely in a phase of more darkness than light and something was trying to emerge. It was a strange kind of predicament because I didn’t realize what I was seeking until I gave myself permission to step back, ponder, and pause. Always drawn to contemplation and prayer, I discovered that I had managed to gloss over much of that part of my expression with an ever expansive work schedule, including filling the gaps with volunteering and being available for an assortment of other tasks; granted most of which I loved doing, but I was risking sovereignty to busyness.

My life was totally upside down. As an evolving being, consciousness had risen to the forefront. My points of reference required not just an overactive mind, but a clear one; not just a mass of cells and tissues but a loving, soft interconnected heart; and not just a functioning body, but a fully attuned one with awareness beyond the five senses. It appeared that somehow my yearning had launched me into a totally different dimension. In digging deep into myself searching for a renewal or rebirth, I unexpectedly discovered a life that transcended the ordinary.

Pierre Chardin de Teilhard profoundly states:

All that matters at this crucial moment is that the massing together of individualities should not take the form of a functional and enforced mechanization of human energies (the totalitarian principle), but of a “conspiration” informed with love. . . . With love omitted there is truly nothing ahead of us except the forbidding prospect of standardization and enslavement — the doom of ants and termites. It is through love and within love that we must look for the deepening of the deepest self, in the life-giving coming together of humankind. Love is the free and imaginative outpouring of the spirit over all unexplored paths. It links those who love in bonds that unite but do not confound, causing them to discover in their mutual contact an exaltation capable, incomparably more than any arrogance of solitude, of arousing in the heart of their being all that they possess of uniqueness and creative power.

Love seems to be the prevailing word from ancient sacred texts to philosophers and modern day teachers of the perennial tradition. Their wisdom is fired by love. Misused and misunderstood, I’ve come to understand love as the defining Principle from which all life arises, through which we all evolve, and eventually return.

In this transition I’ve had to make some choices. Some were easier than others like no TV, Facebook fasts, and abstinence from media news streaming weren’t really that challenging. However, extended nature walks, restructuring class offerings, protecting the sacred contemplative times, and dedicated daily practices of personal self-care and healing tested my commitment to this new lifestyle — though consistent with my temperament— because it seemed like I wasn’t doing enough or (at times) anything.

Perhaps, the sacred times—what is perceived as not doing—are the most important contributions we can offer during our sojourn on the earth. I don’t know. It’s just a thought.

Amazingly the introspective year has been more formative than rigid; more liberating than binding. And as Ilia Delio, OSF says in A Hunger for Wholeness:

The burden of our future is upon us, and our task today is to surrender ourselves to the power of Divine Love. This is the heart of the gospel message: if we want a different world, we must become a different people.

Whew! Far from being dull, life has become ever more expansive, awe-inspiring, and gratifying—full of creativity, play, and spaciousness. That’s some really good news not just for each of us, but for the planet.