Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Today’s text

Ephesians 1:17

May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a spirit of wisdom and perception of what is revealed, to bring you to full knowledge of him.

Reflection

I fell into a pattern of prayer more than a year ago that continues to appear from time to time. I was writing a small book when I first noticed I kept returning to a particular phrase.

I did not want the book to flow from my mind, but from a deeper and truer place in my being. I wanted to experience oneness with the words and ideas that flowed from the end of my fingers, so that there was no distance, no separation between what appeared on the page and what I felt within.

The words needed to express what my soul knew by way of deepest feeling and intuition. So, each morning I knelt in the place of my writing and prayed: “May I hear the voice within the voice that renders all other voices irrelevant.”

I sought that voice that speaks within my own being that, when I hear it, all else flees my heart, all anxiety and uncertainty, all other truth and awareness.

Following this prayer, I would write.

I do not know if I can describe the sensation or awareness that frequently arose from within me in this process of putting fingers to the keys. I always knew when the words were forced, coming from mere thought and not from some hidden point within me where my spirit and the divine spirit rested comfortably within each other, abiding.

I could feel it. I knew when the words where right, and when they were clever ideas but not the expression of that deeper voice. When I heard it I did not need to ask whether the words were true, for they resonated with the calm of a grace-filled love that filled the soul with the sublime sweetness of utter peace, often with tears.

In such moments, the voice I heard within, the voice that spoke back to me from the computer screen, was so much greater than my own, more calm, utterly certain and unperturbed.

Yet, it was my own voice, speaking divine wisdom and truth through my experiences and struggles, which had become the medium for the voice of the Loving Mystery who was pleased to join divine Spirit with my frail and mortal spirit … to speak.

And, I think, this prayer of Ephesians was answered: “May … the Father of glory give you a spirit of wisdom and perception of what is revealed, to bring you to full knowledge of him.”

There was a voice inside of my own to which I listened. It spoke wisdom I do not possess and gave knowledge, however full, of the Unimaginable One, of you my Lord, Holy and Loving Mystery.

In that time, nothing else mattered. All other voices were irrelevant. All that mattered was hearing, listening, feeling and speaking from the point of soul where my spirit and your own merged into a single speaking of total love for a crazy world … and for me.

Pr. David L. Miller