Friday, September 22, 2006

Today’s reading

Philippians 1:21

“For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain” (Phil. 1:21).

Prayer

There are days I cannot wait to praise you. Awakened from the sweet joy of a good rest, I rise into a world where you are, and I have all I need to have and know all I need to know. Eagerly, I descend the stairs to sit in this chair, anticipating words unthought and unimagined that will wing me again into the wonder that you are, the illimitable and all-encompassing love from which we all come and to which we all go.

I am born anew, fully alive in You who inhabit this corner of the basement and all reality. To be here, presence to Presence, to know as lovers know, is to live. The chattering ego with its banal demand to be taken seriously evaporates in such union, an insubstantial vapor, a fog of illusion constantly mistaken for the real. You are real, knowing the love you are is life.

I know Paul spoke of his physical death and return to you as he wrote these words; “to die is gain.” But dying to the drivel of power, status, image, wealth and all which postures as life-givers, that, too, is gain. Mere mirage they are, hiding the substance of the Eternal, the love that labors secretly in the impenetrable abyss of being itself.

But all this is beyond me. I but know the blessed face of that hidden love, and it is yours, my Jesus. Let me this day be the breath of beauty and grace that you are. Amen.