The Romance of Your Interior Life...

      ​                                                                                  Celtic Cross 


An insight common to all mystics, regardless of particular faith, is that of remembrance of the Beloved... Whether at rest, work, or even play, the Beloved is always present, like a shadow to a body when standing in the noon-day sun... The height, depth, and breadth of mystic-life, of your interior life, is that of remembrance. Remembrance, while both a subject and an attitude, it is always an essential experiential reality to be cultivated: such is the work of the mystic... Remembrance can, perhaps, best be described as the spiritual or interior application of falling in love...

​Michelle and I have been living an extended honeymoon of now eighteen years: our remembrance of the other is a cultivated magic: we talk, we listen, we encourage, we hold hands while walking, we plainly adore the other, we kiss, and we grab all the time... Our three beautifuls see and know that we are nuts about each other: and that state of being lends itself to our primary family spiritual practice: we always gather for a gratitude circle before every meal together: each of us has our turn to express those things that bring forth an awareness of thanksgiving... Inevitably, we each hear our name called out multiple times: Even in times of hardship and struggle (from which no living being is exempt), awareness of gratitude is both our bread and our breath...

​Falling in love is the sacred path of remembrance: the maintenance of that falling is the work of religion (a work in which it oftentimes miserably fails)... The height, depth, and breadth of the mystic-life can perhaps be best described as similar to that of parents with their first gaze upon their newborn child: that gaze is stunning: the mystic-aura of the newborn gathers into itself every bit of the adoring love of those parents: and returns it without any claim of ownership, in the humble perfection of gratitude... Oh! and the waiting breast! Oh, and the father's hand holding the tiny head! And the sacred tears of both Mother and Father that flood like a breaking dam...  

​Prayer (your interior life) flows from remembrance and gratitude: words can be used, but ultimately, either a groan or a stutter are better. Words in prayer are like a circle drawn in the sand: into that circle we write the words that best indicate our experiences: words of adoration, but also of grief and of loss, words of hope, but also of fears, words of tenderness, but also of stress and anger... what matters is the fact of remembrance... and like a couple in love-making, mutual surrender, one into the other, remembrance-prayer is the spirituality of St. John, leaning forward onto the breast of Jesus of the Beloved, and listening to the heartbeat of God...

​In work and in play, in the very midst of the everyday-stuff of our life, we have the opportunity to seek awareness of the Beloved: this spirituality of nonduality is, as it were, the silent alphabet of mysticism... It's fundamentally silly to perceive difference as the heart of creation: good / bad... beautiful / ugly... worthy / unworthy... etc. etc. The Divine Beloved is not separate from creation: the whole of creation is sacramental: a magic-portal for an encounter with and in the Beloved...

​Remembrance of the Beloved, is both an outlook and an inlook... Interiorly, we might link the Holy Name with our breath, for truly, our breath is our one never-ending meditation... this inlook inevitably transforms one's outlook... and our outlook is the direct evidence that we are alive in our endless romance with the Beloved... romance is the way of the lover... love-notes, sneaking up to kiss one's lover on the back of her neck, surprising her with an evening out (sometimes without you!), and hot tub interludes... everyday can hold any number of moments of remembrance... So too with the Divine Beloved: a moment, even a single breath, offered in gratitude for the opportunity to live and to love and to give...  

​Narrow shafts of divine light pierce the veil that separates heaven from earth... There is no creature on earth in whom God is absent... The presence of God's spirit in all living things is what makes them beautiful... If we look with God's eyes, nothing on the earth is ugly... When our love is directed towards an animal or even a tree, we are participating in the fullness of God's love... It is not believing in Christ that matters; it is becoming like him... A person who is rich and yet refuses to give food to the hungry may cause far more deaths than even the cruellest murderer... Write down with your own hand on paper what God has written with his hand on the human heart... -- Pelagius, 4th Century, Celtic Christian 

​Another important ingredient in building your sacred life, from the example of the Celtic Church, is that of anamchara: or "soul friend" with whom one shares the inner workings of her soul... A soul friend listens and listens more... occasionally, if one veers way out into la-la-land, he might get a "knock" on the side of his head, delivered by his soul friend... however, the secret of the soul friend is "pass no judgment" and to encourage the inner work of the Spirit: humility, patience, kindness, compassion, and service... 

​The truest surprise of the Celtic rendering of the Gospel is the essential way of engaging with the world in which we live: everything is a theophany, a visible manifestation of the Beloved... remembrance and gratitude can be the love-letters that your life writes to the Beloved... so be it...