The Journey
My earliest memory is the following: I am riding in the back seat
of a car. My mother and grandmother are in the front. I am gazing out
the window and the beauty of a blue ridge of the Appalachian Mountains
on the horizon completely fills me. I hear my mother say, “the
body of Christ.” I know that this is true. I was only 2 – 3
years old.
A few years ago, I was studying the life and writings of St. John of the Cross and I read this:
My beloved the mountains,
The valley's solitary groves,
The sounding rivers and fountains,
The distant islands’ soil,
The wind whistling love's songs,
The calm night,
The twin of the rising dawn,
The silent music,
The sounding solitude,
The supper that refreshes and awakens love.
Reading these stanzas from The Spiritual Canticle was a
little epiphany, and with it returned that earlier memory – my beloved
the mountains, the supper that refreshes and awakens love, and my
mother's voice, “the body of Christ.”
If we go back before the formation of the personality, before the
touchy ego came to dominate our days, we will come into a place of
wonder and awe, a place where our Essence is alive and well once more,
a place that will feel strange and unreal to us at first, so much have
we become used to this prison of ego.
“Unless you become as a little child, you cannot enter the Kingdom of
God,” Jesus said. Once a teacher said to me, “What if you could
experience being free of all these judgments? What if you had no
projections?” The hunger was immediate – that would be such a relief.
That would be such freedom. But here is the hard part, now I have to
watch it, and watch it, and watch it – the projections, the judgments,
the criticism, the constant touchiness of the ego, the uneasy feelings
that crowd my little mind and heart, the ridiculous trumpeting of my
silly little opinions. We become as little children when we turn away
from justifying our opinions and just pay attention to what is before
us with humble, open eyes. See the wonder of it. The incredible mystery
of it. Knowing only that we don't know – we really don't know. We are
not God, we are not even close – in fact, as St. Paul said so
beautifully, all that we think we are is as a pile of garbage when
compared with being-in-love – which is the state of being in the
presence of Christ Jesus. So why is it that we as adults cling to the
oh-so lonely sense of our self-importance? Paul said I count it all as
nothing, all that I used to worry and fret over, all that I was once
was so proud and ashamed of, all that the worldly wise told me was
important, all that I spent my life chasing after and thinking about, I
count it all as nothing, when compared with one simple, brief moment in
the love of Christ.
My mother's voice, “the body of Christ.”
And we are welcomed into the light by that voice. We make the dark and
terrifying journey from the womb, pulled by a mysterious force, and we
are met by that voice that already we recognize – the one who loves us,
the one who has sung to us mysteriously through all these long months
of darkness, the voice that has somehow penetrated the echo chamber of
the womb with all its strange gurgling sounds and the relentless rhythm
of a constant drumming heart.
We make this journey to birth and we are met by this voice that calls
to us in love. We are drawn out of the darkness of the old world of
separation by this love, to start a new life, an altogether new life. A
life of being in love. A life of real communion.
Are you in love? Is your heart pouring out love, overflowing with love,
all day long? Can you believe that that is what we are made for? This
is the difference between the ego and the true self – the true self can
know love. The true self can know communion. The ego exists in
separation – communion is actually impossible for us when we are
dominated by the ego. The ego is so worried about being right that it
can't be in love. The ego is always comparing its merits and demerits
to other personalities. It is always trying to prove itself right, and
others wrong. It is stuck in the poisonous atmosphere of envy,
jealousy, judgment and criticism, seeking power, seeking flattery, and
all sorts of lonely and futile pursuits. Imagine if we were free of it
– right here, right now! No worries, no offenses, no hurt feelings, no
striving, no judgments, no criticisms, no hardness of heart. As
long as we live on earth, the ego will always be with us, but it need
not dominate us. We can see it, observe it, and stop obeying its
whims. We can watch it – we can develop this ability to watch it.
We can then go further and turn our attention from the mud to the
mountain, and we can obey the voice that calls us to ascend and lose
these little fearful identities. Because beyond this cramped world of
ego and personality, lies a place where the atmosphere is lighter,
brighter, finer – a place where the wonder of the child is reborn and
even grows into greater awe, greater love, greater understanding of
higher truths. We must become as little children to enter this place,
and in this place, if we are true to love's calling, the sun of the
true self will rise in love.
It requires a marriage, our very beings must be wed to love and truth –
we have to long for the highest truth, long for this finest love, so
much as to marry ourselves to it, for better or worse, for richer or
poorer, and let our false selves dissolve in the face of its great
light. It is no accident that Jesus first calls to us and shows us a
little glimpse of the transformative powers of heaven at a wedding. For
our separate egos will have to die, and our souls be wed to spirit if
we are to know the transformative love of God that can turn the lowly
water of our lives into the fine wine of the spirit.
If we follow the star, if we gather round the epiphanies, if we turn
from the darkness and move towards the light, listen for the music that
sings of love, and follow, God can help us, Christ can lead us, and we
will no longer be stuck in the prison of the lonely little ego, but be
wedded through the hard and hazardous journey one to another in real
love.
Amen.
The Rev. Edie Bird
Second Sunday after the Epiphany
January 14, 2007
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