The Perfect Bliss of Miracles...

                                                  The Perfect Bliss of Miracles

If you have read, perhaps somewhat carefully, the page entitled "Introduction", you would have come across a word, an idea, and a spirituality, virtually unknown to most: pan-sacramentalism. In essence, it means the Kingdom of Heaven is within you! The Kingdom is right here, right now! In other words, you are living in a world that is pregnant with the Divine... You are living, moment-by-moment, truly, within the Breath and the Touch of the Sacred Presence...

It should not then surprise that the Mystic Poets, like Rumi and Hafiz, often referenced the varieties of Sacred Pleasure...

What then is a "miracle"? I will offer an emphatic "No!" to the idea that a miracle is evidence of the Divine "breaking through" to effect something special... Rather, as if from a profoundly deep sleep, we momentarily awaken to the Really Real... only to, inevitably, fall back into our habitual slumber... This is our version of "normal", of our "reality" in life... But here's the thing: we have been "constructed" instead, to live in a steady state of the miraculous: this "condition" is supposed to be our "normal", our "Real Reality"...

The Kingdom of Heaven is within you! 

Life is for living, even through the bad parts. There is simply no way to escape from pain and suffering. However, too often we are "taught" that we are supposed to constrain our expectations and our attachments, as if such a trick would somehow work a bit of magic... Or, on another hand, others insist that life is a school of lessons to learn so as to eventually be worthy or saved from all of the stuff we hate... The truth for most of us is that we live way too small! We hunker-down into something or other to "manage" or to cope... but, are we really alive? Are we ever really happy or content or satisfied?

Life is for living! All along we should have had teachers telling us the truth, not just some one Nut-Prophet-Christ in Ancient Palestine, that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us: all around, everywhere! Indeed, the very world is Pregnant with the Divine... Our every breath is a miracle...

Ah, but what you want is some sort of testimony, some sort of proof that these words are true... What would you consider a "miracle", as evidence that the Kingdom is Possible... that perhaps, it just might be true? It likely would mean nothing to you if I were to write in affirmation that I have had multiple experiences of miracles... that  I affirm Michelle, Donovan, Devin, and Rose of Sharon as the greatest miracles of my life... and you would likely just say, perhaps even in mild contempt, "Oh, that's so sweet..." Okay. Then, how about this one...

Drifting back in time (I've forgotten the exact year, though not the exact details) to around the year of 1984... I had started a little Catholic Worker House in 1982. Our very small original community of five persons prepared sandwiches and soup in the house we were renting and daily took the food down to our "local" skid-row where we set up shop: a card-table soup line... As you might expect, money was hard to come by. One day, or rather, one night I knew that our experiment in faith and action was going to end: we had no money left. We had no food in the refrigerator for the next days' meal...

I woke the depressed. I told the first volunteers who showed up that there was nothing left... a volunteer, Anna Marie, suggested that we say a prayer (why hadn't I thought of that?). Kevin suggested that he read something from the Bible (why hadn't I thought of that?) Of course, he picked that infamous lie that Jesus took a couple of fish and a few loaves of bread and fed over five thousand men (not counting women and kids, of course)... so maybe over ten thousand people dined on two damned fish and a few loaves of bread... give us all a break, right?

That's exactly it: Kevin read the story. The five of us circled up holding hands and recited the Lord's Prayer. That was exactly it: nothing more. I was completely empty. Right then, holy shit! There was a knock at our door. "Would you like some bread? You can have as much as you want. You just have to unload the truck yourself." As we were praying, a semi-truck had pulled up in the front of our house... We had bread stacked three-feet deep across the sofa: everywhere you could put some bread... 

Exactly then: as I walked back into the house with the last of the bread, the phone rang. I turned to Bob, the volunteer on my right, saying, "God, I hope that's not a donation of more bread!" It wasn't. Rather, it was a fisherman wanting to know if we'd like four hundred pound of fish... Miracles are not the hope that something wonderful will come to us (like winning a lottery). Rather: miracles are the very stuff of the Universe: breathing in, we receive the Breath of the Divine Oneness... breathing out, we return the favor... this mutual in-dwelling is the Really Real... The Kingdom of Heaven is within you! 

The inescapable conclusion is this: our one task in life is to awaken to What Is... and then to increase our capacity and skill in living awake: we practice the Presence of God; we practice Compassion; we Build Justice for Everyone, we strive for Nonviolence, Mercy, Forgiveness, and Kindness as our lifestyle; we practice and learn to recognize the Beatitudes everywhere; we do not lie, manipulate, oppress or exploit; we practice abundant simplicity and so eliminate greed; we practice happiness and pleasure; we give up fear... One could describe this, in somewhat mystical terms, as "the burn of Love's hand"... but it isn't a "burn" that hurts. It's all a miracle that liberates... The perfect bliss of miracles is that you have the opportunity to create a life of deep meaning and purpose: for others...