Exhaling

I don’t want anyone to miss this, so I’m re-posting Carol’s comment so that we can pursue this conversation in broad daylight

In my all but purloined (verrrrrrry late library book), “The New Man,” Merton says much about contemplation as surrender, surrender as contemplation, or so it seems to me:

Contemplation is a mark of a fully mature Christian life. It makes the believer no longer a slave or a servant of a Divine Master, no longer the fearful keeper of a difficult law, no longer even an obedient and submissive son who is still too young to participate in his Father’s counsels. Contemplation is that wisdom which makes man the friend of God.. Contemplation is a foretaste of the definitive victory of life over death in our souls. Without contemplation we indeed believe in the possibility of this victory, and we hope for it. But when our love for God bursts out into the dark yet luminous flame of interior vision, we are enabled, at least for an instant, to experience something of the victory. For at such moments “life” and “reality” and “God” cease to be concepts which we think about and become realities in which we consciously participate. … Contemplation is the highest and most paradoxical form of self-realization, attained by apparent self-annihilation. … It is a communion with Christ, the incarnate Word. Not only a personal union of souls with Him, but a communion in the one great act by which He conquered death once and for all in His Death and Resurrection.

Now…. where to begin to unpack this….

My surrender is my consent to Your loving Christ in me, to allowing myself to be the place on earth where You turn toward the Son and He turns toward You; it is in this that we are Yours in Him, that we are sons in the Son.

But we must make way for Him by our willingness to set ourselves aside completely; only in You are we whole, only with Christ in us can our true selves be realized. We are not fully ourselves until we allow Christ to live in us. And it takes such strength to surrender. But in surrendering to the Spirit fully (with unwrapped hearts!) we are made new, as the Spirit infuses new qualities in us, His rushing, mighty wind sometimes taking our breath away…

We are all called to this apotheosized being, this perpetual newness of life; we are all called to bear Christ into some darkened place in the world, because Christ is perpetually longing to pour His light, life and love into every darkness, dryness and disorder. And it is Your will that this is accomplished through us, but only with our consent. Our freedom is always ours, and we must choose.

We must choose love, that Love may be revealed in us in ways we cannot expect and often do not recognize, so that Your love continues to reach out to every soul.

Father, I learn from Mary something about Your way in the world – as soon as we conceive the Word within us (always conceived of LOVE!), we are immediately open to being misunderstood, even by those closest to us.  Your own mother was misunderstood by the kindest and gentlest heart. How this must have hurt her, to know that Joseph was misjudging her, and was struggling interiorly because of her. Yet she trusted patiently, leaving it entirely in Your hands. Teach me that surrender, that complete surrender that allows me to offer Your Body on the altar of my own life, by allowing my life to be Yours. 

By Mary’s “FIAT” You were wedded to humanity, and her words were really Christ’s in her, one and the same with His. Her complete surrender to Your will was her acceptance; in giving all, she receives all. Her YES is Christ’s, as His YES echoed hers throughout His own life. It was her embrace of ALL You willed for her and for us, including every grief and suffering implied – her own embrace of the cross. The courageous YES of this young girl proved her complete trust in Your Providence.

 Yes, You ask for blind trust but also extreme courage in love. If our life is in Christ, if we are to become His other selves, we must be courageous; if Christ is formed of our lives, it means He will suffer in us and we will suffer in Him. My surrender to Your will is my consent to Jesus living through me, suffering in my body, loving with my heart and hands, praying in me, pouring Himself out in the specific form of my life. 

He lives forever in us.

(Can you tell that I am unavoidably busy lately? My time is not my own, and yet there is much peace in this – when we have no choice in what we do, we can be sure we are doing what He wants us to do. And yet, it so often feels that we do not accomplish very much in a day. I remind myself often that if I am doing what He wants me to do, then I will get done what He wants me to get done. We must only do everything with love, and then we remain in His will.)

You said we must take up our cross if we would follow You,

And it’s true that we are burdened, and have so much to do;

But in the exigencies of the day as mother, friend, and wife,

I see a seamless garment, warm with Your life. 

You are with us always, and the beautiful thing that we sometimes miss in all our busy-ness is that Your Presence on earth has all the practicality our nature requires. We serve You by attending to the needs of those around us, and this orientation towards others keeps us sane and happy, and helps others to be sane and happy. And whole, ultimately.

And wholeness makes us interiorly free; free enough to open ourselves fully to Your love, to unwrap our hearts and offer them to You; free enough, open enough, to utter our own FIAT again and again.

We must be freed of ourselves and of every attachment in order to utter the FIAT needed to bear You into the world in the way YOU choose, no matter how improbable or unbecoming it seems to us. After all, what is more improbable or unbecoming than God as a laborer, a homeless rabbi? What is more unbelievable than the Son of God setting aside His glory or setting aside His garment to wash His disciples’ feet as a servant, so that they would be ready to share a meal? What is more scandalous than God as a convicted criminal brutally executed?

To our minds in seems that even more improbable than all this is to find Christ in the demanding spouse, the intrusion into our prayer time, the person who must be forgiven 70×7 times – God as one who must be endured, God as interruption, God as one who asks for reconciliation. Yet You are there.

You are just as present (sometimes more so) in the pain and burden of life as You are in the joy and wholehearted prayer we experience; as much in the perplexity and failure as in the clarity and success.

Until we see that the Incarnation means that You have reconciled the world and God, that You are the Point where God and man, Absolute Meaning and the cosmic reality, have become one, we will have a divided vision. Until we know the miracle that is the Word-made-flesh, we cannot see God and the world at the same time. We have to know that You are most present in our daily realities, not away somewhere in the realm of idea, or in some metaphysical place we cannot reach in this life, in order to embrace life in its quintessence and live it fully in You, with You, for You.

We have to know that You are the Life in every life, the Love in every heart, the giver of every true gift, the strength of every thing we lean on, the light in certain eyes to which we are drawn, the warmth in every welcome, the foundation of every true thing, in order to live in gratitude and see with singular vision the one reality that is You.

You are all. We exist for You. To You be the glory, though for now it is hidden in You.

I sometimes want to escape my chaos in order to find You, but then You gently remind me that You are IN these very things I want to escape. Your will for me is revealed in the duties, inspirations, interruptions and frustrations of the moment. Yes, Lord of every quark and photon, You are loving, struggling, rejoicing, grieving, praying, suffering, giving, glorifying the Father in us, in ways and in places that we wouldn’t think to look. In every child, You are a dependent child; in every father, You offer protection; in every mother, You long to gather Your chicks. In the sick, You suffer; in the poor and weak, You are needy (“Have I been with you so long, and still you do not know me?”); in the strong and generous, You give. In the perfect, You shine; in the struggling, You are at work; in those who have abandoned themselves to sin, You weep and wait in silent solidarity (“You have no life in you.”). In every childhood, You are the child, in every adolescence, Your zeal for the Father’s work begins to burn; in every man, You long to be Prophet, Priest, and King. Every birth is a new Incarnation; every death, another Calvary. You are with us always. The way is marked for us by the exigencies before us. Help us to respond generously, to pour ourselves out in these things for love of You. Give us the grace to choose Your will so that You can live and act in this particular moment through us. Reign in us.

Every moment with You seems like a moment stolen right now. Here, leaning against the clothes dryer, waiting for the next load to finish, stealing a moment to focus my thoughts on You, I look up at the sky (such a small patch from here) and wish I could continue my hermeneutics of clouds, philology of birdsong… Just sit and BE and take You in.

It seems that I cannot carve out a slice of solitude for us that is long enough for me to feel connected and recollected, but it’s okay. We both know. Life is like that sometimes. This lack of space and silence is teaching me that my life IS my prayer – not just an offering to You, not just lived with You by my side, but lived in complete union with You, in union with the Mass, in union with Your perpetual prayer. If I allow You to truly live in me, in my daily mundanities and exigencies, my life is prayer.

Because for all the profound mystery that You are, Your love for us drove You to enter our world in flesh and bone, live in our domesticities, toil in our dust. You redeemed our very nature and the nature of every mundane activity in which we engage by partaking of every bit of it as Emmanuel.

And You continue to be present as the fire in our flesh, the meaning in our mundanities. Not merely the ideal man to imitate, an idea to strive for, a symbol for our struggle, or a superficial covering over the things we’d rather not face – You are fully present, truly here in the events of every day, in the souls that hurt us or bring us joy, in the pangs of conscience or the consolations we experience, in the labors and celebrations and routines and challenges that make up our life, in the creations and destructions of the world. So if I live my life for You, live fully for You, my life can be prayer.

Time for my own prayer and silence is necessary too, and You will help me carve out that time soon I trust; but in the interim I have no choice but to make each moment the best prayer it can be (sometimes praise, sometimes petition, always thanks, all with love) and accept this as Your will for me right now. Yes, Jesus.